“Daniel Turner’s art lies as much in what we commonly think of as the creative act as it does in well calibrated destruction,” writes curator Elena Filipovic, who describes the artist’s practice as “melting down, reducing to particles, or otherwise transmuting everyday objects into spare installations, minimalist sculptures, strangely electric paintings, or even ephemeral stains on walls or floors.” The present work, (WHSC 44102.4 Bar), is made from material elements, such as waiting room chairs and desks, sourced from a North Carolina psychiatric hospital—a type of institution that the artist became familiar with while being treated for bipolar disorder. Through a relatively simple but conceptually charged act of material transformation, Turner thus acts upon and re-presents an element of his own history while posing an open-ended question about the interactions of physical and psychic memory.
Regardless of form, content, or context, histories cannot be erased.
Daniel Turner
