David Horvitz Portfolio ChertLüdde
Born in 1983, Los Angeles, California. Lives and works in Los Angeles. Education: 2010 MFA, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 2004 BA, University of California, Riverside, California Residencies: 2017 Curva Blu, organized by INCURVA, cultural association, Favignana The Great Learning, organized by La Criée, centre d art contemporain, Rennes, Montcontour, Brittany 2014 IMMA, Dublin 2013 Recipient of Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Emergency Grant Session, Recess, New York Fifty-Five Honey Locust Trees, curated by Joe Ahearn, Clocktower Gallery, New York Solo Exhibitions: 2018 Solo exhibition, Bela Campo, Lisbon 2017 Eridanus, Galerie Allen, Paris Dedicated to Forgotten Oceans, Organised by Barnie s at the window of Davish News, London 2016 Concurrent solo exhibitions ja at Chert, Berlin and oui at Yvon Lambert Bookshop, Paris 2015 The Studio Rent Editions: 2010-ongoing, Pacific North West College of Art Situation #20, Fotomuseum Winterthur through the morning) kiss this pillow, tongewölbe T25, Ingolstadt 2014 David Horvitz: Gnomons, curated by Helga Christoffersen, New Museum, New York David Horvitz, Blum and Poe, Los Angeles Concurrent solo exhibitions at Jan Mot, Brussels and Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw 2013 Hot, muggy, then cold and windy. We swam in the sea, it got misty and we couldn t tell what time it was anymore, Peter Amby Gallery, Copenhagen Statements, with Chert, Berlin, at Art Basel, Basel POST, curated by Jacob Fabricius, Antechamber, North galleries, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen At Night They Leave Their Century, Chert, Berlin Drugstore Beetle II, Special Collections Library, California State Universty, Long Beach, California 2011 Adobe, San Francisco, California The Discovery Award, Arles Photography Festival, Arles Room 129, commissioned by Fillip Magazine, Fair, Vancouver, British Columbia 2010 Carry On, Galerie West, Den Haag 2009 Believe Inn, Chicago, Illinois Public Space One, Iowa City, Iowa 2008 To a Sunset in Palos Verdes, sitela, Los Angeles, California I Will Go Somewhere and Send You Something from There, Right Window, San Francisco, California Group Exhibitions: 2018 Fantasy is a place where it always rains, Fanta Spazio, Milan 2017 Take me (I m Yours), Curated by Christian Boltanski, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Chiara Parisi, Roberta Tenconi, HangarBicocca, Milan Carte blanche to Camille Henrot, Palais de Tokyo, Paris While I Was Also Listening To David, Eleanor, Mariana, Genk, Jean, Mark, Daphné, Pierre, Shima, Simon, Zin, Christian and Virginie, curated by Félicia Atkinson, Julien Bismuth, Sophie Kaplan et Yann Sérandour, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes The Vague Space. Sammlung Christian Kaspar Schwarm, Museum für moderne Kunst, Weserburg Carte blanche to Camille Henrot, Palais de Tokyo, Paris Art of the Postcard, Selling exhibition of artists work with postcards, at 14 Florence Street, London Days are Dogs, Carte Blanche to Camille Henrot, Palais de Tokyo, Paris Tidalectics, curated by Stefanie Hessler, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), Vienna Flowers are Documents Arrangement I and II, curated by Emanuele Guidi, ar/ge kunst, Bolzano Duet with Artist. Participation as Artistic Principle, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen Group Exhibition Curated by Asha Bukojemsky, Samuel Freeman gallery, Los Angeles You can tell I m alive and well because I weep continuously, Knockdown Center, New York While I was also listening to David, Eleanor, Mariana, Delia, Genk, Jean, Mark, Pierre, Shima, Simon, Zin and Virginie, Criée centre of contemporary art, Curate by Felicia Atkinson, Julien Bismuth, Sophie Kaplan and Yann Sérandour, Rennes, France Commercial Break, Public Art Fund 40th Anniversary, Public Art Fund, New York 2016 Group exhibition, curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt, Project 88, Colaba, Mumbai A Moment In Time, BolteLang, Zürich
The Sun Placed in the Abyss, at Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus Sea, curated by Monika Kozioł, MOCAK, Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow Group presentation at Artissima, Turin The Distance of a Day :New in Contemporary Art, curated by Rita Kersting, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem I will go where I don t belong, at Volcano Extravaganza, Stromboli Par tibi, Roma, nihil, Palatin Hill, Rome I M WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO CALL ME, at Galeria Dawid Radziszewski, Warsaw Six Weeks, in Time, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle True Spirit, Galerie Allen, Paris Publish or Perish, Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2015 Current Location, Waiting Room, Minneapolis 10th Baltic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Szczecin Aquí hay dragones (Here be Dragons), La Casa Encendida, Madrid Regular Expressions, 221A, Vancouver Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015, at MoMA, New York Bunting, at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbay Transparencies, Bielefelder Kunstverein and Kunstverein Nürnberg Triple Canopy presents Pattern Masters, Performance at Whitney Museum of American Art The Secret Life, Murray Guy, New York Night Begins the Day: Rethinking Space, Time, and Beauty, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco Im Inneren der Stadt, Künstlerhaus Bremen When we share more than ever, MKG Museum, Hamburg Cool / As a state of mind, MAMO, Marseille Group presentation at Art Cologne, with Chert, Berlin Good luck with your natural, combined, attractive and truthful attempts in two exhibitions, Crac Alsace, Altkirsch Mijn Vlakke Land, FoMu, Antwerp more Konzeption, Conception now, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen Tongue Stones, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn 2014 Requiem for the Bibliophile, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara Scars of Our Revolution, Yvon Lambert, Paris Kochi-Muziris Biennal, Fort Kochi, India Crossing Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Ways of Working, According to an Office Desk, Upominki, Rotterdam AGITATIONISM, EVA International 2014, curated by Bassam El Baroni, Ireland s Biennial, Limerick City Unseen Presence, IMMA, Dublin #nostalgia, Glasgow International 2014, CCA, Glasgow To Meggy Weiss Lo Surdo, Happy Hours, CO2 gallery, Turin Canceled: Alternative Manifestations & Productive Failures, The Orseman Gallery, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts Simultáneo, La Tallera, Cuernavaca, México And I laid Traps for the Troubadours who get killed before they reached Bombay, Clark House Initiative, Bombay Flag Stavanger, curated by Randi Grov Berger and co-presented by Entrée, Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway video screening 25, ZERO, Milan 2013 Only to Melt, Trustingly, Without Reproach, curated by Tevz Logar, Skuc Gallery, Ljubljana Editionshow, Chert, Berlin I ve Lost My Marbles, Totàl, Athens And So On And So Forth, curated by Margit Sade Lehni, Centre for Contemporary Art Riga, Latvia The Space Between Us, Courtesy, St-Ouen Please Come to the Show: Part II (1980 Now), organized by David Senior, MoMA Library, New York Canceled: Alternative Manifestations & Productive Failures, Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading, PA Stranded Travelers, Atelier 35, Bucharest Just what is it that makes today so familiar, so uneasy?, LIAF, Lofoten International Art Festival, Norway Rematerialized New Galerie Paris/New York, New Galerie, Paris on Off moments, Grimmuseum, Berlin Le tamis et le sable 2/3: L Intervalle, Instants Chavirés, Paris New Eyes for New Spaces, ISCP, New York Und everybody says yeah on internet meme, The House of Electronic Arts, Basel 2012 The End(s) of the Library, Goethe-Institut New York Library, New York The Making of Americans: A marathon reading of Gertrude Stein s novel, Triple Canopy, New York Let us keep our own noon, curated by David Horvitz, West, Den Haag Rome Photo Festival, MACRO, Testaccio, Rome Fair Exchange, curated by Taeyoon Choi, Eyebeam, New York Canceled: alternative manifestations and productive failures, organised by Lauren van Haaften-Schic, Center for Book Arts, New York Frieze, with Triple Canopy, New York Group exhibition, Access Art, Vancouver Matter Out of Place, The Kitchen, New York Scenes of Selves, Occasions for Ruses, Surrey Art Gallery, Vancouver In search of, curated by Lennard Dost and Daniel Dennis de Wit, Academie Minerva, Hoofdweg Holland the chief on top of the chief, MIRACLE & CONNELLY PRESENTS, Vancouver Force Fields, curated by Alexis Granwell and Jenny Jaskey, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia 2011 The Greater Cloud, curated by Petra Heck, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam Worng, IMO, Copenhagen Intimate Bureaucracies: Art and the Mail, curated by Zanna Gilbert, Art Exchange, University of Essex, Essex Subject to Change, Fathom+Hatch, New York The Best of 2011, Soloway, Brooklyn, New York The Open Daybook, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California FINISHED, Showpaper 42nd St Gallery, New York, New York As Yet UnTitled, SF Camerawork, San Francisco, California LATE Nights, Berkley Art Museum, Berkeley, California (performance) 2010 FREE, New Museum, New York Different Repetitions, curated by David Senior, Booklyn, New York Palling Around with Socialists, U-turn Art Space, Cincinnati, Ohio We have as much time as it takes, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, California FAX, Burnaby Art Gallery, Vancouver An Immaterial Survey of our Peers, Chicago (online) 01, Presented by 01 Magazine, 107 Shaw Gallery, Toronto The Page, Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University. Orange, California Burn, Baby, Burn!, DUVE Berlin, Berlin (group screening) Cheat Codes: Lessons in Love, Space 204, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee (group screening)
2009 Into the Archive: Contemporary Art in the Bard College Stevenson Library, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York Session_7_Words, Am Nuden Da, London Gifts by Artists, Art Meropole, Toronto, Canada Young Collectors #1, Sign, Groningen Tell Me Everything, As You Remember It, Creative Research Laboratory, Austin, Texas Get Free%, Golden Parachutes, Berlin Ideally, Utopics, Switzerland Evading Customs, organized by Peter J. Russo and Lumi Tan, Brown, London SF Camerawork, San Francisco, California The World is Flat, curated by Rhizome, in No Soul For Sale, X-Initiative, New York Light and Wire, Circus Gallery, Los Angeles, California Unintended Uses, Nexus, Philadelphia The Wild So Close, curated by Jennifer Cane, Or Gallery, Vancouver, Canada 2008 Gifts by Artists, Art Metropole, Toronto, Canada Cycling Apparati, High Energy Constructs Gallery, Los Angeles, California Line Up, Strip Down, Fade Out, Vanderbilt University Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee I will Send You a Photograph of the Sky for Every Day, Galerie West, Den Haag Egoesdayglow, 533 Gallery, Los Angeles Here is Where You ll Find Me, The Lab101, Culver City, California Spacing Out, curated by Cinders Gallery, Space 1026, Philadelphia Some Food We Could Not Eat, September Gallery, Chicago, Illinois To Illustrate and Multiply: An Open Book, curated by Lynda Bunting, MOCA. Los Angeles, California Imagined California, Fort Gallery, San Francisco, California 2007 Photo Exhibition, The Smell, Los Angeles, California 1st Annual Juried Show, juror: Jorge Pardo, Treehouse Gallery, Los Angeles, California Forever is not Long Enough, UCLA gallery 1250, Los Angeles, California Between Thought and Expression, Sweeney Art Gallery, Riverside, California 2006 Chain, High Energy Constructs Gallery, Los Angeles, California Greater LA, Cal State University Long Beach Art Department Gallery, Long Beach, California Selected Projects: 2016 Frieze Projects: Frieze New York 2016, curated by Cecilia Alemani 2014 f/stop 6, Festival für Fotografie, Leipzig 2013 Artist s Breakfast, POST, MoMA, New York Eat the blue, Le 116 center for contemporary arts, Montreuil, invitation by Jagna Ciuchta Flag New York City, Performa 13, New York Let Us Keep Our Own Noon, NY Art Book Fair, MoMa PS1, New York The Distance of a Day, Studio commission, Rhubaba, Edinburgh Monsanto seed burning performance, The Shandaken Project, New York 2011 Life drawing at Zucotti Park, with Adam Katz, Occupy Wall Street, New York Creative Time Tweets, New York, NY (commissioned Twitter project by Creative Time) Tabehoudai Tour, for Iron Maiden Artist Tours, New York, NY (hosted project) 2010 No Soul for Sale, project with Rhizome, Tate Modern, London (commissioned project) 2009 Miami Basel project with Art Metropole. Miami, Florida (commissioned project) Sign/Co-Sign, curated by Light and Wire, Miami, FL (commissioned project) Meeting Point, project with NYU Student Body, New York, (commissioned project) The Box Tour, various locations across North America (project) Hors Les Murs, Fette s Gallery, Los Angeles, California, (solo online project) In Real Life, curated by Laurel Ptak, Capricious Space, Brooklyn, NewYork (commissioned project) Innerseeing/Outerseeing, by Gabriel Saloman (commissioned online project) 2008 Miami Basel Art Fair, Art Metropole/ Printed Matter, Miami, Florida, (commissioned project) One Size Fits All, Printed Matter, New York (commissioned project) Light and Wire, Los Angeles, CA (solo online project) http://www.six-years.com/ (solo online project) Bibliography Selected Articles: 2017 A thing without a past? The economy and Aesthetics of artists editions, Mousse Magazine by Orit Gat, issue #57, Februay/March 2016 L arte? È un disturbo dell umore. Parola di David Horvitz, Artribune, January 2016 David Horvitz Mood Disorder, Artists Books and Multiples, January 2016 2015 7 Questions to David Horvitz by Transparencies blog, December 2015 After the Hookup, the App, by Paul Soulellis on Rhizome online, December 2015 How this artist s internationally cliche self-portrait was spread across the internet by Eugene Reznikon, American Photo Mag online, June 2015 I send you this California Readwood: An interview on Mail Art with Zanna Gilbert and David Horvitz, by Alison Burstein, MoMA learning blog, January 2015 2014 Contemporary Art and Online Popular Culture, by Domenico Quaranta, ARTPULSE Magazine, December 2014 David Horvitz at Blum & Poe, by Natilee Harren, ARTFORUM, November 2014 David Horvitz at Blum & Poe, by Andrew Berardini, Art Agenda, July 2014 Sounds of All but Silence, by Roberta Smith, New York Times, May 23, 2014 Artist s diary, by Matteo Mottin, ATP Diary, April 2014
2013 In Conversation with David Horvitz, by Rachel Peddersen, Andreview Local Colour?, by Suvi Lehtinen, ArtFetch The Art World Eats Breakfast All Day Long, by Sarah Cascone, Art in America David Horvitz Would Like to Invite You to Breakfast, by Harriet Staff, Poetry Foundation Art Basel, by Aoife Rosenmeyer, Art Agenda, June 2013 Best of Art Basel, by Francesca Gavin, Dazed Digital The Daily Pic: David Horvitz shows sunset and sunrise from opposite points on the globe, by Blake Gopnik, The Daily Beast Künstler, die uns aufgefallen sind: David Horvitz, by Boris Pofalla, Monopol, 07/2013 What color is your parachute, David Horvitz?, interview by Jacob Fabricius, Mousse, issue 38, April May Interview between David Horvitz and Regine Ehleiter, artzines.de What Next? How Occupy influenced New York s art scene, by Tirdad Zolghadr, Frieze 2012 Appropriating Web Interfaces: From the Artist As DJ to the Artist As Externalizer, by Marialaura Ghidini, New Media Caucus Towards a History, Politics and Philosophy of the Online Image, by Laurel Ptak, Foam Magazine, #29 2011 David Horvitz, Something Fishy on Pelican State Beach, Rhizome Undoing Property? Edited by Marysia Lewandowska and Laurel Ptak, Sternberg Press, Berlin The Distance of a Day, Motto Books & Chert, Berlin How to Shoplift Books (Come Rubare Libri), Automatic Books, Venice Comment voler des livres / Jak kraść książka, (Polish and French translations of How to Shoplift Books), Automatic Books, Venice Cómo robber libros / Bogrov, (Danish and Spanish translations of How to Shoplift Books), Automatic Books, Venice I was Serious, I was Eating Apples, Automatic Books, Venice Watercolors, Natalie Haüsler and David Horvitz, Eberl Print GmBH, Immenstadt, Bavaria 2012 Public Access, Publication Studio, Portland, Oregon Sad, Depressed, People, New Documents, Los Angeles, California 2011 The Open Daybook, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California My Grandmother s Recipes, Morova, Poznan, Poland Volume North + South, Publication Studio, Portland, Oregon 2010 Everything That Can Happen in a Day, Mark Batty, Los Angeles 2009 Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film, 2nd Cannons Publications, Los Angeles 2010 Drugstore Developer: David Horvitz, interview by Jenny Borland, BOMBLOG 2009 Art Review: David Horvitz at 2nd Cannons Publications, by Holly Myers, Los Angeles Times Small Distractions, by Jaime Calder, Newcity Art Free for All, by Silvia Anna Barrila, Damn #22 2008 Life Monger, by Jonas Moody, Atlantica Mag Selected Publications: 2015 Mood Disorder, Chert & Motto Books & New Documents, ISBN: 9781927354230 Stolen Spoons, Pork Salad Press, Copenhagen, Denmark, ISBN: 978-87-91409-77-6 2014 Dublin Foxes, Automatic Books, Dublin, Ireland Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond, exhibition catalogue, published by Brooklyn Museum, editor John Antonides, designer Jae-eun Chung, Brooklyn, NY Printed Web #1, published by Library of the Printed Web, Long Island City, NY something between the jurisdiction of time, published by Art in America, author David Horvitz and Alexander Provan, NY Mood Disorder Printed Web #1, printed paper, published by Paul Soulellis Library of the Printed Web Long Island City, New York 2014 2013 It s All About a Small Quiet Longing, or Maybe Something Else, Brooklyn, NY
Nautical Dusk, 2013 2017 Performance, sculpture Bronze bell, engraved text, text on paper, closing time at nautical dusk Nautical Dusk is a performance piece by David Horvitz, in which he contemplates the notion of the distance of a day through the closing of an event or space at the time of nautical dusk. Nautical dusk is the moment in the evening when the Sun is angled at 12 degrees below the horizon. During nautical twilight, consisting of nautical dawn and dusk, both the horizon and the brighter stars are usually visible, making it possible to navigate at sea. Nautical dusk also marks the beginning of astronomical twilight, the darkest of the three twilight phases the earliest stage of dawn in the morning and the last stage of dusk in the evening. The piece was first performed in 2013, where the gallery closed each day at the time of nautical dusk rather than at normal closing hours. It was subsequently enacted at another gallery in Milan, and eventually at FIAC in 2017, where ChertLüdde closed its booth each day at the time of nautical dusk instead of following the regular fair hours. Seven bronze bells were made for the fair as a new element to the performance, each carrying a hand-engraved phrase, night disappearing into sea disappearing into. The bells were rung by the staff at the mark of nautical dusk to signal the end of the day. The language of the text and time table of this performance changes in relation to location and time. Nautical Dusk, 2013 2017 Performance, Sculpture 9 cm ø 14.5 cm Bronze bell, engraved text, text on paper, Nautical Dusk
Mood Disorder, 2012 ongoing In 2012, Horvitz made a self portrait on a beach in New York City. The photograph, based on stock images that depict depression and sadness, was subsequently placed by the artist on the English Wikipedia page under an article titled Mood Disorder, at 5:43pm on May 17, 2012. Since Wikipedia s content is copyright free, it has thereafter circulated online, as components to articles relating to depression. Inspired by Bas Jan Ader s I m too sad to tell you (wherein the artist s tearful face was captured by various media such as postcards and film and repeatedly performed and circulated), Mood Disorder similarly took on a viral life of its own, which eventually resulted in his banning from Wikipedia and the removal of the images. Beyond Wikipedia, however, news pages, blogs, journals, and various other kinds of sites started to use the photo as a free stock image to illustrate their articles. Using reverse image searches, the artist has tracked the articles that have been using his photograph, amassing an archive that still continues to grow larger over time. The project follows a number of Wikipedia interventions by Horvitz. For Public Access (2010-11) - a work that unfolded as Horvitz drove up California s coastline, from the Mexican to the Oregon border - he took a series of scenic photos of himself looking out to sea. These images were then uploaded to the Wikipedia entry for each location and, in turn, produced much discussion amongst the Wikipedia community as members tried to figure out his identity and the purpose of the photos. The works have been exhibited in MoMA, New York, 2015; Gnomons, a solo exhibition at the New Museum, New York, 2014; Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015, a group exhibition at MoMA, New York; Transparencies, a group exhibition at the Bielefelder Kunstverein and Kunstverein Nürnberg, 2015-2016; days are dogs, carte blanche to Camille Henrot, a group exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2017. Mood Disorder, 2012 ongoing A selection of 57 articles digitally printed on paper Each print: 45 32 cm Edition of 10 plus II AP and 1 exhibition copy
Installation view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York Group exhibition, titled Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015 Digital Image 2015 The Museum of Modern Art, New York Photographed by Thomas Griesel Not for reproduction
Public Access 2011 ongoing series of 50 C-prints Wikipedia article printout 24.4 37.1 cm In January 2011, David Horvitz traveled up the coastline of California on Highway 1, stopping along public access points of beaches to take photos of the scenic sites, in all of which the artist was present but unidentifiable. Horvitz wanted the pictures to be accessible to the public and connect online users to these remote areas though the Internet. Yet his intention was thwarted by Wikipedia editors who were puzzled by the emergence of the self-portraits, and who questioned the motives of these uploaded photos, not knowing that this project was the activity of the artist himself. Analyzing the suspiciously identical editing styles of the users who uploaded these photos online, they discovered that it was indeed one person who was using multiple IP addresses and usernames to upload the images. Although the editors debated whether such activity was legal, one editor ultimately removed all the images and Horvitz was blocked from Wikipedia altogether. The entire project was later repackaged for Rhizome to now include the comments by the editors, and the documentation of the photographs deletion. So the project had various iterations, which was essentially what Horvitz s original intent was to create images that potentially would be sourced and re-sourced. Public Access, 2011-ongoing
top: Golden Gate National Reserve middle: El Segundo bottom: Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes From the book, Public Access, 2012 Published by ChertLüdde Unique editions made to order
Installation view at Blum and Poe, 2014
Private Access 2010 ongoing series of 9 C-prints Wikipedia article printout 24.4 37.1 cm Private Access is a piece commissioned for the book Undoing Property, edited by Laurel Ptak and Marysia Lewondoska. Based off Horvitz s earlier work Public Access, the work also consisted of photographs taken by the artist along the coasts of beaches, but this time on private locations with property restrictions. Since the work consists of photographs of Horvitz on private property, it can technically be used as evidence of trespassing. Bay Shore, NY A view of the Long Island Sound from Morris Cove in East Haven, CT
Looking into Cape Cod Bay from a private beach in Dennis, MA
The Distance of a Day, 2013 two videos, 12 minutes each In early February I asked my mom to go and watch the sunset and make a video. She did this from the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where I used to watch the sunset when I lived in California. She made the video with her iphone taped to a metal barrier that protects people from falling over the cliffs. In synchronicity with her, I too was looking at the sun and making a video. From my perspective the sun was rising. I had calculated where the the sun would be seen as rising at the exact same moment it was seen as setting in Los Angeles. In early February this was the Maldives, a location which may not exist in the near future due to the rising of the seas. As my mom watched the sun set into the Pacific Ocean, I was watching it rise over the Laccadive Sea. Synoptic is a useful term here. It comes from the Greek syn, meaning together, and optic, meaning seen. Though separated by thousands of miles, we were watching the sun together. The title, The Distance of a Day, is a reference to the idea of the journey. Originally, journey meant the distance one traveled in a day. Here, the spatial distance that separated my mother and myself was not defined by the distance one could travel in a day, but by the day itself. By the delimitations of a day where the sun rises and where the sun sets. Phones were chosen to make (and display) the video because they are devices that orient us spatially and temporally. They are like contemporary pocket-watches and compasses that we carry with us. They coordinate and synchronize us. They broadcast moments instantaneously across distances. Or, what seems to be instantaneously. There is always some delay. The same two phones that were used to shoot the videos, that were once on opposite sides of the world, are now used to display the videos. They are now only inches away. Right now somewhere the sun is simultaneously setting and rising. Someone or something is probably bearing witness to this. -Text by David Horvitz The Distance of a Day was exhibited in numerous venues including: Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2018 Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, 2016 MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Kraków, 2016 NOMAS Foundation, Rome, 2016 Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2016 Mambo Bologna, Bologna, 2015 Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, 2015 New Museum, New York, 2014 Jan Mot, Brussels and Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw, 2014 Art Basel Statements with Chert, Berlin, 2013
Installation view at the Israel Museum, 2016
Untitled, 2014 ongoing Hand-blown glass vases from different pieces of sea glass found on beaches around New York, melted together and reformed. each approx.: 20 cm The project consists of a number of hand-blown glass objects. Traveling to numerous beaches in and around New York, Horvitz collected small pieces of smooth, frosted sea glass that had washed ashore. Through difficult to remelt because of the difference in densities and fast congealing when hand-blown, a number of new vessels were made from the many pieces. Bringing the glass back to its original form and function, Horvitz created ordinary objects that, nevertheless, bear the mark of the process that they have gone through and could, in principle, break at any moment because of their inherent tension. Horvitz is interested in the act of dispersion and the possibility of changing common perceptions and systems by moulding the images or materials shaped by or used to signify time.
Days are Dogs - Carte Blanche to Camille Henrot Group exhibition Palais de Tokyo, Paris 18 October 2017 7 January 2018 On the occasion of the third Carte Blanche exhibition at Palais de Tokyo, Camille Henrot invited David Horvitz to participate in the show, titled Days are Dogs. David Horvitz presented his works Mood Disorder and The Distance of a Day. The carte blanche interventions were initiated by Philippe Parreno in 2013, and since then artists are periodically invited to utilize the entire 13,000m² Palais de Tokyo exhibition space. For this exhibition, Henrot explores the imaginary yet powerful time structures that govern our lives, namely the days of the week. Days and Dogs invites artworks to speak in dialogue with each other, some from Henrot as well as from other artists around the world, which in turn evokes the sense of shared time, knowledge and experience. The Distance of a Day, 2013 Digital video, 12 min Edition of 5 plus II AP and 1 exhibition copy
Installation view Wallpaper designed by Horvitz
When The Ocean Sounds, 2018 Billboard Print on Frontlit PVC 573 633 cm The sea holds a special place in David Horvitz s practice. In early 2018, he transcribed the sound of waves on a beach in Palos Verdes, Los Angeles, where he resides. Out of these transcriptions he made a score for a human voice, intended to mimic the sound of the sea. Transcribing and performing sea sounds are also exercises in listening and meditating loudly; at the same time, they are exercises in imagining or remembering that we are actually part of the sea.
The Studio Rent Editions, 2010 ongoing Pacific North West College of Art 15 June 16 August 2016 In 2010, I was living in Brooklyn. I had just received my MFA from Bard College and I was trying to figure out a studio situation. I don t necessarily need a studio to make my work, but I ve always felt it is important to have a designated place outside my home to go to. A silent place where I could sit and think. A place to drink green tea and daydream, to develop thoughts and leave those thoughts there for the next day. Since I didn t have a full time job, I couldn t see myself paying rent for a New York studio over a long period of time. And so I came up with an idea. I would make an edition-of-ten artwork each month. Maybe it was a photograph turned into a postcard, or some photocopies, or a text-work, or a LaserJet print, a watercolor of a flower I stole while walking down the street, or an envelope of sand from a California beach. Maybe a rock from Death Valley, some bronze shavings from a sculpture being polished, messed up screen prints, a polaroid of my hand touching Marcel Duchamp s grave in Rouen, France, two polaroids of the sky taken one minute apart, or a polaroid of the view of the Pacific Ocean from a cliffside in Humboldt County, California at the exact same latitude line as my studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn. I had a rubber stamp made that read Studio Rent Edition. I stamped each edition and then dated, numbered, and signed them. I sold these for 1/10th of my studio rent. If I sold all ten, they would subsidize my studio rent for that month. If I sold only a few, they would still reduce the cost of my rent. I started this in September 2010 and still make them to this day. Most of the older editions are now sold out. This exhibition is the first time my Studio Rent Editions are being shown publicly. The entirety of this series will be on display. All but one of the editions in this exhibition are on loan from Laurel De George, of New York City, who is one of the few people who have collected almost every one. The remaining edition is borrowed from the collection of Geoff Tuck and David Richards in California. Text by David Horvitz April, 2016, Los Angeles, California The exhibition was in partnership with Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies.
ja, 29 April 11 June 2016 Chert, Berlin Dear Jenny, I am writing this underneath tree #1438 in the Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Garden. It is a Giant Sequoia, a species of tree that is among the oldest and largest living things in the world. Their only natural habitat is the Sierra Nevada Mountains in central California. When you walk through a redwood grove, you lose all sense of the scale of human time. I thought it fitting to write this here because we are using your phone to display the app in the exhibition, which is still connected to my old phone. I left my old phone at home, so your phone points to where I traveled from, California, and states the distance between those two places; some 9000 km. When someone stands in the gallery, what is actually exhibited is a distance and orientation in space. Maybe it is also a notion of place. The interface of the app is an arrow with only the distance between you and the other person. It is a simple gesture, to point where someone else is. The arrow is like a compass needle, but you become each other s North.I like to think about how the arrow points off and away from the screen. Whereas most apps on your phone generate value by focusing and accumulating attention onto the screen, this is intended to divert and direct it into a distance. I also like to consider the app as an anti-social media. You do not have friends, which Facebook has made meaningless. It is just for you and someone else, since you can only connect to one person at a time. And the initial connection can only be made when you are together in the same place (like when we connected last time I was in Berlin). I have been rephrasing what I have already written in a text for Simone and Thomas exhibition in Bielefeld and Nürnberg, where this app was first exhibited. About this intimacy at a distance. And about how we perceive space and distance. The difference between imagining someone as a dot on a map in a screen and imagining them in physical space, in the direction of their body. Here is a direct copy and paste from the text I had written: Whether across a town, a mountain range, a forest, or a sea, one can literally shift one s neck or move one s feet to orient the body and gaze towards the other person. But this is a gaze that moves into and across distances. A gaze that follows the curved surface of the Earth, going beyond the visible and into the imagination. Whenever I take a shower I always wonder when the water was a cloud, 2016 Neon Imagination is important here. It is an exercise in one s capacity to imagine. To see what isn t there. Like looking at water and imagining when it was once a cloud. And when it will be once again. David p.s. I have been sitting so still writing this. A fox has just walked by me. It was only a few feet away. I made a photo with my laptop s camera.
three standard breaths, or the shapes of hours, 2014 Three glass vessels; each one made using the quantity of sand from an hourglass that would equal one hour s worth of time Verre de Paris, 2016 Glass bottle from the opening of David Horvitz s Oui exhibition at Yvon Lambert, Paris turned into wind chimes For this work, Horvitz took hourglasses to a glass blower and requested that new vessels be made from the contents within, each amount of sand in an hourglass resulting in a vase. The work was to embody the literal shapes of hours.
Imagined Clouds (Berlin), 2016 Water bottles from different supermarkets and shops in Berlin, Germany
Newly Found Bas Jan Ader film, 2006 Original found super 8 film, digital video, film reel The ambivalent position of Wikipedia as a collectively created source of truth becomes evident in the entry on Horvitz himself. In it we are informed that a few years ago the artist rediscovered a lost film by Dutch concept- and performance artist Bas Jan Ader, who disappeared at sea in 1975 in an attempt to cross the Atlantic in a 13 sailing boat. The film was supposedly found at the University of California Irvine where Ader taught during the early 1970s. When Horvitz subsequently put up the work which he named Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film up on YouTube on behalf of the Patrick Painter Gallery, there were consequences. The gallery in charge of Ader s estate protested and the video was removed. The film, which is now back on YouTube under the title Newly Found Bas Jan Ader Film is a brief, grainy, black-and-white clip just a few seconds long. It shows a man cycling into the sea. The work plays on both Ader s famous Fall II in which he cycles into an Amsterdam canal and his probable death at sea. At the same time this work is about ownership, art as commodity and the notion of an artwork s originality.
(The Space Between Us), 2015 App for two Iphones Download app here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-space-between-us/ id1054845321?mt=8
Frieze Projects: Frieze New York 2016 Curated by Cecilia Alemani 2016 For his participation in Frieze Projects 2016, David Horvitz hired a professional pickpocket to surreptitiously distribute small sculptures into fairgoers bags. Playfully pointing out the wealth accumulated in one space for the duration of the fair, Horvitz turned an illegal action into a gesture of generosity. Horvitz, also known for his gastronomical interests, was further commissioned by Frieze to create a special sandwich for the fair s menu, titled The Pickpocket Sandwich. Commissioned and produced by Frieze Art Inc. for Frieze New York Projects 2016. Photo by Timothy Schenck. Courtesy Frieze Art Inc.
Oui Librarie Yvon Lambert, Paris 23 April 2016 the exhibition closed on a rainy day In 2016, Horvitz presented an exhibition of works and new editions at Yvon Lambert in Paris. The press for the exhibition states, David Horvitz is an artist whose work shifts seamlessly. Shifts that occur when natural phenomena adopts a nomadic personality, finding loopholes and alternative logics within them. He has in the past decade created a body of work that spans, weather, gastronomy, travel, measurement, and public space. He deliberately counters patterns derived from professionalization and efficiency. Horvitz, half-japanese, by the ocean, his head buried in his hands, gathers and disperses through airport lost and found services. Pebbles often possess a naturally frosted finish. The exhibition closed on the first day that saw rain. above: Proposals for clocks, 2016 Series of five silkscreen posters that propose alternate ways of measuring time: A clock that is wound by the wind. A clock that follows the shadows of cats. A clock whose seconds are synchronized to your heartbeat. A clock whose minutes are the lengths of your breaths. A clock that falls asleep. below: Untitled (Dead Horse Bay), 2015 10 Glass vases hand-blown from different pieces of sea glass found on various beaches by the artist, melted back together
left: Untitled, 2015 three watercolours pictured middle: Installation view top right: Invitation Piece, 2016 Handwritten text on paper, signed and numbered. bottom right: Demarcation, 2016 Ipod shuffle & speaker
Through the morning kiss this pillow Tongewölbe T25, Ingolstadt 17 January 28 April 2015 The exhibition features a collection of mail art between Horvitz and Zanna Gilbert (who was at the time a post doctoral fellow at the Museum of Modern Art) over the course of three years. Over 150 pieces of mail sent from Horvitz to Gilbert were amassed, including driftwood, found paintings, watercolors, sand, postcards, poems, cymbals and cookies. The collection was finally installed in Gilbert s mail cubicle at the museum, which was then run as a secret gallery. MoMA Cubicle was also documented and made into a book. The show includes a text by Horvitz: In spite of everything Which breathes and moves, since Doom (With white longest hands neatening each crease) wants smooth Entirely Our Minds -Before leaving my room I turn, and (stooping Through the morning) kiss this pillow, dear where our heads and were lived. despite what breathes and moves, since undoing (With white longest hands, which every wrinkle offset) our spirits will flatten all -Before I leave my room, I transport, and (through the morning stooping) kiss this pillow, my love where our heads and were lived. MoMA Mail Art, 2014 Watercolours drawings and post envelopes
lullaby for a landscape (All the Pretty Little Horses), 2015 fifty-four tempered aluminum alloy chimes tuned to the notes of the folk-lullaby All The Pretty Little Horses; various night blooming, sleep inducing, and sedative plants, including: Moon Flower (Ipomoea alba), Roman Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile), Valerian (Valeriana officinalis), Night Blooming Jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum), Flowering Tobacco (Nicotiana sylvestris) Dimensions variable David Horvitz s lullaby for a landscape breaks down the melody of a lullaby into individual notes which each play from large chimes installed within the grove of trees at Socrates Sculpture Park. Individually, each chime is a fragment of a completed song that only exists within a singular moment of time. Collectively, the chimes complete the lullaby strain and progress temporally to evoke a surreal dream-state.
somewhere in between the jurisdiction of time, 2014 32 unique glass vessels carrying seawater collected in the Pacific Ocean at longitude line 127.5 west of Greenwich Exhibited at Blum & Poe, 2014 Dimensions variable Interested in the subjectivity of time zones and the notion of mapping time, Horvitz ventured out by boat to the oceanic junction where a time shift occurs between Alaska and French Polynesia s Îles Gambier and the western half of North America and the Pacific Islands. Collecting the water from this location, Horvitz returned to Los Angeles and placed the water in glass bottles across the floor of Blum & Poe in a matter which diagonally divided the gallery on a north-south axis. The exhibition includes a letter that Horvitz sent to the US government asking to consider the area marked by his glass vessels as being officially on Alaskan time instead of Pacific Standard Time for the duration of the exhibition.
Gnomons Stowaway series, New Museum, New York Curated by Helga Christoffersen 5 May 29 June 2014 In his practice, Horvitz grapples with time and standardized measurements, and the shifts that occur when natural phenomena are subjected to manmade systems and vice versa. Unfolding as concrete actions, Horvitz s works are often ongoing or self-generating projects. Taking advantage of diverse systems of circulation, he gathers and disperses images and objects through media such as the internet, the postal system, libraries, and airport lost and found services. Optimistically alluding to the possibility of an alternative logic, Horvitz exploits the structures in place around him as much as he deliberately counters patterns derived from professionalization and efficiency. Titled Gnomons after the device on a sundial, which effectively produced the first image of time in the form of a shadow, Horvitz s presentation includes the work Let us keep our own noon (2013), consisting of forty-seven handbells created through the remelting of a French church bell dating back to 1742. The work is activated by forty-seven performers who, at local noon (when the sun is positioned exactly above the New Museum), collectively ring the bells and then disperse throughout the building and out onto the surrounding streets of the Museum. Referencing the bygone practice of navigating time according to the position of the sun, the work reminds us that our daily rhythms are not solely determined by tradition and locality, but also rooted in global forces. In another work, The Distance of a Day (2013), Horvitz journeyed halfway around the world to the exact location where he could see the sunrise in the same moment that his mother was watching the sunset in California. Rather than emphasizing the result of a journey or the duality of here and there, Horvitz creates an image of the measurement that separates two people in time exactly one day. Let us keep our own noon, 2013 Installation of 47 bronze bells made from the metal of a melted French bell dated from 1742 Turnings, slag, performance Dimensions variable
top left: The Distance of a Day, 2013 bottom left: Untitled, 2014 top right: Let us keep our own noon, 2013 bottom right: Let us keep our own noon, 2013
Agitationism (Group Exhibition) Curated by Bassam El Baroni EVA International, Limerick City 12 April 6 June 2014 For the group exhibition Agitationism, David Horvitz presented Evidence of Time Travel, a new work that was commissioned specially for EVA International. The piece was made from March 24 to April 3 in Dublin on residency at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), and is a continuation of works by Horvitz that explore travel and place, time and its standardization. Upon arriving in Ireland, Horvitz kept his watch set to the time of California s time zone (the state he was born in) which is currently eight hours behind Ireland. Using this skewed clock, which is operating autonomously from his immediate surroundings, he scheduled his daily routines. A breakfast coffee in the morning enjoyed while it is the afternoon for everyone else, a lunch while people are having dinner, a dinner while everyone is fast asleep, and an after dinner walk while dawn is breaking and the only ones in the streets are foxes. As his body attempted to adjust to the light of the day and coordinate with his current locality, he consciously resisted this temporal and spatial adaptation as he stayed on his own time, the time of his birth place, using the clock as his sun. Presented at the exhibition were photographs and text documents from his experience in Dublin.
David Horvitz Jan Mot, Brussels and Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw 10 January 8 February 2014 The exhibitions in Warsaw and Brussels will open the same moment Jenny Chert s first child is born. Her child, a baby girl, is due January 3. This can happen any moment now. Since we cannot know the exact day, the exhibitions opening will be announced immediately after the birth. And since we cannot be in two places at the same time, the exhibitions reception will be held first in Warsaw. We will then travel west and have the Brussels reception. The works will be spread out over both exhibitions. Some works will be split in half and synchronised. Some works, maybe an ocean, will travel back and forth. Some works, like 47 small bronze bells, will be re-distributed throughout both cities. There is this impossibility of knowing when a moment will occur. Here the temporality of living (the time of breathing and sleeping and loving) does not correspond to the scheduling of professional time, a time where the details of whole days (and months and years) are pre-determined. Where durations are defined with exact beginnings and endings. Where there is no room for spontaneity or rupture or derailment. What is the calendar for the unknown? David Horvitz announcement, 2014 Jennifer Chert is David Horvitz s gallerist based in Berlin. The exhibitions took place at Jan Mot, Brussels and Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw and were organized by Julia Wielgus. Olga was born on January 10 at 8.28pm. Opening in Warsaw: January 10 at 10pm. Opening in Brussels: January 11 at 8pm.
Let us keep our own noon, 2013 not titled yet (hourglasses), 2013 two hourglasses, one containing sand from Maldives, one containing sand from Los Angeles
Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film, 2006 The Distance of a Day, 2013
How to make yourself visible for a rescue boat when you are stranded in the dark at the bottom of a cliff on a rocky coast in Hong Kong, 2012-2015 Slide projection, 35 mm slides (30 photos) loop and one framed photograph 12.7 x 19 cm Edition of 10 plus II AP
I will think about you for one minute, ongoing. Jar, money; unlimited edition The artist will think about you for one minute for 1 euro.
an explanation for a disappearance in Winschoten, 2012 Different materials, including two notebooks, different print outs on paper, handwritten text and sketches on paper, one copy of Sad Depressed People book, one copy of how to disappear in America without a trace (S. Burner), for artists portrait photos, 3 envelopes with photographs, watercolors on paper, one book of watercolor drawings, 2 photo cameras, one copy of Journeys out of the Body, various clothes, plastic bags, one ceramic cup, pills, other various materials. From: David Horvitz <hikarusaru@gmail.com> Date: Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 9:09 AM Subject: (an explanation for a disappearance in Winschoten) To: David Horvitz <hikarusaru@gmail.com> This email is being sent at the same time an artwork is on exhibit in Groningen, Holland. It is an artwork I did not install, but is attributed to me. This email serves as a distributed caption to the work. It is a caption that the viewers in Groningen are unaware of. On September 2 I flew to Holland to take part in two group exhibitions about Bas Jan Ader. The plan was to fly in for the first opening, which contained old work. I would then make work in the town of Winschoten for the second show in October. I arrived in Holland with no help getting to the opening (you need a private shuttle). I missed the opening. I then tried to go to the room that was rented for me to sleep in. But there was no key. And the building had no doorbell. And the two curators didn t think I would need any help getting in because I must be able to walk through walls. I was almost stranded all night. The next day I began to make work for the October show. I was met with two more weeks of annoyances (do I need to list these?). Spontaneously, I abandoned the piece I was making, and decided to give them something new. Referencing Ader s disappearance at sea, I decided to stage my own disappearance. I left all my stuff in my room except for my passport, and took off without telling anyone. I stopped using Twitter, Facebook, etc The room was left completely intact, with a few vague clues pointing to my departure. I was not romanticizing the disappearance. I was disappearing as a direct response to the two unorganized and irresponsible curators. Curious to see what they would do for the exhibition (and perplexed that they only emailed me once asking where I was), I recently looked at installation photos on their site. Installed are the bed I was sleeping in and my studio walls from Winschoten. If the curators are to exhibit this work, they must stand behind it entirely. They must stand behind the fact that the work was a direct response to them. That what is being exhibited is the artist s right to refusal in the face of curatorial irresponsibility. top: an explanation for a disappearance in Winschoten, 2012 A series of selfportraits holding left behind items bottom: the exhibited display at the residency of the artist s room
Lukas Geronimas and David Horvitz Pinocchio taken down by security, 2008 DVD Video 0 41 During the exhibition I ve got something in my eye at Hessel Museum of Art, 2008, David Horvitz and Lukas Geronimas walked out of the museum wearing two Pinocchio costumes, which must be worn to watch Paul McCarthy s video piece: Pinocchio Pipenose Household Dilemma. They were closely followed by security and taken down.