Daniel Horowitz

Paris, 2016 - In this body of twenty works on paper commissioned by the Musée de la Chasse et de Nature in Paris, Daniel Horowitz dives into the exercise of pseudo-historical documentation. Retelling a fictive safari expedition, he subverts original eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century artifacts to explore the art of hunting, as a metaphor for man’s quest of self. 

The objective is to successfully manipulate the image by harnessing the given style and technique of the antique engravings and watercolors, and confuse the viewer as to what is authentic and what is intervention. By seamlessly integrating the counterfeit historical work back into the permanent collection of the Museum among many other genuine artifacts from the past, the exhibition confuses what is “museological objectivation” and “ontological engineering” to cite the philosopher, Vincent Normand. Questioning the ontological role of the museum, the exhibition, and the historical artifact all together is at the heart of this approach. 

Daniel Horowitz's practice is one of painting, drawing, collage and installation. Through combining realism and surrealist abstraction, he produces works worthy of modern curiosity cabinets. Created following unnatural associations that turn logic or scale upside down, his chimaera express with a creaking humor the fear of our contemporary world, in search of its identity. (...) By re-appropriating well behaved romantic engravings, Daniel Horowitz touches on this taste for the uncanny which inspired certain vocations amongst Safari candidates. His grafted creatures, with disproportionately long necks -- coherent even though "unseen" ever before - give life to our collective symbolic lexicon.

Curated by Claude d’ Anthenaise, Director of the Museum 
Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
62 Rue des Archives, 75003 Paris, France