Horror
Dave Tolchinsky and Dan Silverstein, 2007
Clay, wood, paint, and audio, 26" x 22" x 12"
Horror explores the space of indecision, the gray room between the perceived polarity/duality of paradise and inferno. Through one door (or gate, as the case may be) certain doom, through the next unlimited pleasure, and through the third — who knows what. True horror is not looking into the face of hell; true horror is not being able to decide. A musing about suburban paralysis and overwritten TV, this is our first collaboration.
Press
Dave Tolchinsky and Dan Silverstein’s Horror combines an Edgar Allan Poe story of crypt-like suffocation with the fairy-tale structure of Let’s Make a Deal to narrate the deterioration of the body. We hear a panicked, disembodied voice coming through the ground, desperate to escape, but unable to choose. (Were all those 1970s game shows really allegories of death?) Like Nytkas’s work, this is also a version of the horror that lies beneath. Perhaps every door — every choice — is a kind of trap leading to our own eventual disappearance.
-Pam Thurschwell, from Defining Horror.
Dave Tolchinsky and Dan Silverstein created the compelling and aptly named Horror, an apparently simple sculpture that presents three portals – three choices for the viewer. . .a closed gate, an open door and a rather strange pit that once again forces the viewer to lean in very close to peer down into it. An escalating audio track presenting the horrors of indecision accompany the piece. The panicked voice, which when listened to for awhile, eases the tension and soon crosses the border from insanity to the absurd, humorously bringing to mind the Bridge Guardian’s simple questions from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the ultimate price paid for minor indecision!
From “The Horror Show” at THE DORSKY GALLERY — Reviewed by George Higham:
http://www.ny3d.org/2009/08/the_horror_show_at_the_dorsky.html
And please see the catalog for “The Horror Show” (Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, August 7-Sept 2, 2009) which Horror was part of:
Explore more of Dave Tolchinsky’s sound work at:
