Daniel Silver's 'Rock Formations' at Frith Street Gallery Explores Sculptural Boundaries

Daniel Silver's exhibition 'Rock Formations' at Frith Street Gallery in 2015 featured nine untitled works from 2014, challenging distinctions between raw material and sculpted form. Four marble heads in the gallery's rear, some purchased and others crafted by assistants to mimic classical portraits, were reshaped by Silver to erase their features, rendering them anonymous while highlighting cracks and stone coloration. Another group of four sculptures in the front juxtaposed weathered Carrara marble blocks with bronze portrait heads, mounted on bases that evoked display furniture from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Silver's most recent sculpture consisted of two large marble pieces balanced on a concrete block, with a red spray mark hinting at its quarry origins, blurring lines between figuration and abstraction. The artist's process involved making and unmaking to question where value and meaning reside in sculpture, drawing inspiration from archaeological collections.