Daniel Silva: Served Live

Baert Gallery presents SERVED LIVE, a solo exhibition of new works by Daniel Silva. The exhibition is Silva’s first solo show and commemorates the inauguration of the gallery.

The gallery space will feature a cohesive assemblage of wall-based works created in Silva’s London studio, as well as site-specific sculptures consummated during his stay in Los Angeles. The materials selected –beeswax, wood, carbon and metal– invite for images to be contemplated beyond the visual plane.  Their intrinsic connection with warmth and energy maps a sensorial constellation that can only be fully perceived when experienced live.

The sculptures on the floor and on the ceiling skylights inform and transform the space inside the gallery. These pieces are site-specific: sculpted from wax sourced from Californian honey bees, and arranged for the gallery’s layout. Their raw tonality and scent evoke a recording of the local flora and, in the case of the skylights, the sculpture transcends its physical space to warmly infuse light into the room’s interior.

The wall-based works are carbon structures laid on top of cotton canvases –thin slivers of objects to be unveiled from a bird’s-eye-view perspective. In a similar way that the beeswax pieces chronicle their indigenous context, these carbon structures visibly register the wooden planks of Silva’s studio in London, atop which they were created.

Silva’s work typically takes the form of site-specific installations that catalyze the interplay of stimulus between the pieces and the viewer. As defined by Gilles Deleuze,   "Sensation is pure contemplation" –a concept that resonates throughout this body of work. The materials used and the emotive and referential cues they yield, play an integral role in crafting a cohesion that is not led by a fixed narrative. 

Daniel Silva graduated from Central Saint Martins (CSM) in 2014 with a top of the class distinction and was the recipient of the Daniel Ford Award for innovation. In 2014, shortly after graduating, he was nominated and shortlisted to the Saatchi New Sensations 2014 Art Prize. In 2015, he was one of the three artists selected to represent CSM in the University of Arts London space at Art15. The artist lives and works in London, United Kingdom.