146THE END OF THE DAYDREAMdiptychs directly question anthropocentric systems of knowledge: they
subvert the naturalized processes through which we construct a comfort-
able world through representation.
The presence of animals in Horn’s images problematizes conceptions
of identity and difference, and the possibility or impossibility of con-
ceiving animals within such a paradigm—Horn’s images invite us to
look, think, and look again. This embodiment of looking through a per-
formative shift of the gaze, and a demand for multiple glances, entails a
cognitive shift triggered by the indeterminacy caused by the doubling in
her work. But before we more carefully consider these aspects of Horn’s
diptychs, it is worth assessing that in itself, the presentation of two iden-
tical images in art can constitute a negation of affirmation—a substantial
derailment of the epistemic condition that constructs the realistic art-
work as the copy of the original referent in the world. In painting espe-
cially, a portrait is a representation that captures a unique individual in a
unique moment in time. The value and validity of the portrait tradition-
ally rests on this exclusive and univocal relationship. According to the
value system that grants painting a special place in the history of repre-
sentation, the uniqueness of the image validates its genuine relationship
to the model. The idiom of painting may not technically exclude the pos-
sibility of multiplicity in image production, but it certainly has been cul-
turally expected to do so.
Paradoxically, photography’s technical essence, as well as its pivotal
difference from painting, lies in the intrinsic reproducibility of the im-
age, an idiomatic condition that has been traditionally repressed by cul-
tural frameworks of image consumption. Thus the reproducibility of
photography has been always excluded from the exhibiting space, forc-
ing the photographic idiom to adhere to that of painting through a re-
nunciation of its specific ability to make nonaffirmative statements
about realism.
The title of the work, Dead Owl, reinforces the self-reflexive semantic
economy of the image. It plays a pivotal role in problematizing the system
of ambiguities by which a lifelike owl is pronounced dead by the artist.
Furthermore, the white plane behind the owl betrays human interven-
tion: it inscribes the tension between nature and culture. If the owl is
presumed alive, the implication may be that it is kept captive, for the uni-
formity of the white backdrop denotes an artificial enclosure. However,