Daniel Silver at Frith Street Gallery

Frith Street Gallery

29 November 2024 – 18 January 2025 
 
In the first instance, one might assume that the title of Daniel Silver's exhibition Uncanny Valley derives from Freud’s concept of the ‘uncanny’. However, it actually quotes a song by the musician and actor Johnny Flynn, in collaboration with the writer and academic Robert Macfarlane (2023), whose lyrics deeply resonate with the exhibition’s themes: 

“We all got lost in the uncanny valley 
Took a wrong turn at the end of the alley 
No one had a map, and no one kept tally 
In the uncanny valley, no one kept tally.” 

This song alludes to the underworld, evoking feelings of losing oneself or the haunting realisation of being lost. It reflects a yearning for connection with nature and a desire to escape the monotony of ordinary life, inviting listeners to imagine existences beyond human experience. In a post-COVID world grappling with climate change and the rise of artificial intelligence, these themes take on an even greater significance, set to an accelerated and upbeat rhythm that conveys a sense of strangeness.

In this context, Silver’s exhibition features ten sculptures that occupy the gallery space in a manner that embodies the rhythms and atmosphere of the song. Arranged like totems, each heavy stone sculpture interacts and gazes at one another across the gallery, creating a constellation of bodies. The artist curates the space so that each piece corresponds to another, playfully interacting and looking in various directions as if they are alive, blurring the lines between the animate and inanimate. If this exhibition were to materialise as sound, it would indeed be a loud and noisy tune. Viewers are invited into an immersive experience, navigating through the sculptural forms. As they engage with the artworks, they discover different perspectives, spot hidden details, and unveil unexpected revelations, such as the delicate form of a butterfly behind one of the pieces.

Silver’s sculptures echo the sounds of the above mentioned pop-folk-nature-inspired song, serving as both inspiration and the raw material for his work. Yet, he also inevitably delves into psychoanalytic theory – not just by referencing the uncanny, but also through his recent re-reads of The Interpretations of Dreams (1899). Further, Freud’s concept of the uncanny, as analysed in his essay ‘The Uncanny’ (1919), has been extensively appropriated in the art world as a lens to interpret experiences of uncertainty or moments when the familiar morphs into something frightening. It refers to the sense of strangeness previously noted in Flynn and Macfarlane’s song.

In this vein, Silver’s earlier project, Dig, commissioned by Artangel in 2013, is worth recalling. Set in a partially constructed, abandoned site in central London, where one of the largest Odeon cinemas once stood, the project featured numerous worn, fragmented sculptures scattered across the area like remnants of an archaeological site. The act of digging – taken from archaeological practice – serves as a metaphor for psychotherapy; it represents the effort to unearth buried figures from the past, paralleling the psychoanalytic journey of delving deep into the mind to reveal hidden truths. Just as one digs through layers of earth to uncover artefacts, the therapeutic process involves excavating the unconscious to uncover insights and material manifestations of consciousness.

Silver is inspired by modernist and classical Greco-Roman sculptural references, pausing to acknowledge the influences of artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Picasso, and Brancusi, as well as the objects and antiques found in Freud’s study. The stone sculptures on display at Frith Street Gallery consist of large, raw pieces of marble weighing between 125 and 180 kg, excavated from an old family stone yard in Pietrasanta, Italy. The process involved splitting larger rocks into smaller forms, using the chisel to carve the marble that sets the base of the pieces (working with the forms the material already has), from which Silver intuitively sculpted heads using clay, with deformed features. This forms a strange interplay between two distinct materials: one, a raw, natural morphology and whiter colour; and the other, more detailed and darker coloured, shaped by the artist’s hands. Such a contrast makes us think about the duality between the conscious and the unconscious.

The result is the formation of an ‘uncanny valley’ that exists between the human and non-human, intertwining rocks with bodies, minerals with flesh, embodying multiple temporalities. It is, therefore, relevant to conclude with the element of time within the exhibition. Silver’s work evokes aspects of the Greco-Roman past and art history while simultaneously reflecting the geological time represented by the rocks and minerals. It also highlights the finite and biological nature of human life, as experienced by the viewers navigating through the exhibition, and delves into the psychological dimension of time. This realm, shaped by memories and desires, is the realm of the underworld as a metaphor for the unconscious or the unknown.

Daniel Silver: Uncanny Valley

Frith Street Gallery, 17-18 Golden Square London W1F 9JJ

Paula Zambrano, Curator of Programmes