International icon David Bowie has played a significant role in the artistic life of Danica Barboza (*1988, New York, USA) since a young age. Over the past two decades, the androgynous singer has become the pivotal subject of Barboza’s practice as the central protagonist of her highly personal, autobiographical Artistic Mythology. With a fundamental devotion towards human gestures, interpersonal interaction, and desires, Barboza explores through texts, sculptures, and assemblages, the elemental basis of spiritual, psychological and humanistic impetus and concerns.

In Advanced Pair Bonding, Danica Barboza’s first institutional solo exhibition, the relationship between Barboza and her muse takes central expression and focus. Upon the plateau of a room-size indoor basin, life-sized sculptures of clay, papier-mâché, and wood fuse the faces of Bowie and Barboza into fragmented chimeras. A digital clock submerged in the water, a running countdown, and the sensual element of water become symbols of the coveted union. The absence of Bowie exposes the fulfillment of Barboza’s longing as a phantasm. Instead, the pop idol is stylized into an object of desire, upon which, emotional and physical intimacy is lastly projected. In her tableau of altar-like sculptures and elements of arranged hyper-realism, along with ready-made objects and portraiture, Barboza alludes to human loss and psychological fragmentation, critically questioning contemporary popular culture.

»Through the dualistic visual values of the installation – its rough materiality and highly
staged aesthetic articulation – the subject of ›bond‹ and intimacy itself is cradled, with-
held, sentimentally projected, and fragmented.« – Danica Barboza