Tillou Fine Art presents Totem & Taboo, an exhibition of new works by Daniel Horowitz. The exhibition features works on paper and paintings on raw linen stitched with textiles, juxtaposed with ethnographic artifacts from various private collections. Totem & Taboo will be accompanied by a series of salon-style interdisciplinary conversations and happenings with experts from a variety of fields, including art, anthropology, music and psychology.

Totem & Taboo – Horowitz’s second solo show in New York – draws from Sigmund Freud’s 1913 seminal book, Totem & Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Sa vages and Neurotics. Bringing together works that explore the parallels between the material legacy of animist cultures and psychoanalysis as a means of understanding the subconscious, Totem & Taboo investigates the nature of re-appropriation, the heritage of colonialism, and the West’s fascination with primitive art. The exhibition explores the ambiguity of the post-colonial identity in the Western world, while also paying homage to the influence of tribal art on modernism, and contemplating the existential crisis ushered by the onset of The Anthropocene.
 

More than referring to Freud’s essay, the exhibition ‘Totem & Taboo’ is a reflection on the visible and the invisible. There is no one particular key to look for or find, the viewer is free to walk through the rooms of this historical brownstone; though perhaps the most engaged visitor will find a key – the very key Alice found and used on various occasions. Be prepared: the same action rarely produces the same effect. In Daniel Horowitz’s world and logic, the Cheshire Cat and Schrödinger’s are close friends. Before taking off the veil, you never know what is hidden. Totems are stable things, unchangeable, whereas taboos change all the time: something usually forbidden unless it’s not.

- François Michaud, Head Curator, Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris
 

To further explore the questions raised by the artist, topics such as planned obsolescence, cultural re-appropriation, and controversies in the fields of science and psychology will be investigated during monthly Saturday Salons, a platform for cross-disciplinary conversations and collaborations including lectures, performances, concerts, and panels.