WWDHD?

By: LANGUAGE GARDEN

(Corina Copp, Sophia Le Fraga, Joseph Mosconi)

For release: June 13, 2025

First paragraph, draft uno! “We” are writing this together, and we, together, are Language Garden. A nursery for Rhododaktylos. “We” are also writing—to David! for David Horvitz! To, and for, the astonishing JOAN! Upon the occasion of—ah we are individuated to shell and at times the “I”s have it. I, Corina, I, Sophia, I, Joseph, in no order, for we all know syntax is not order as it breathes in and out in a fingered press-release hue.

Second draft of first paragraph. Recently, this guy I know was dragging Corina, Sophia, and me (I, Joseph) about the reading series we run together out of David Horvitz’s West Adams studio garden. Language Garden is what we call our series, in nominal debt to the lovely Language Garden Pre-School on Fairfax. (Programming LG together is what took our three friendships with David from casual acquaintance to daily texting.) So anyway! OK, the guy begins whining in personal about my co-curators, talking shit if you will: each of us ought to figure out an artistic lane and commit to it, guy glugs. If you were a serious artist, you’d be teaching, he said (he said that? Quel fallacy). If you were a serious poet, you’d have a Selected out by now (what’s now?). I feel mostly bored by this take, but at the same time, I am still thinking about his comments weeks later. (Well personally, I feel bored by our even mentioning it.) Personally….

“What kind of art do you make?” is the hardest question for me to answer, or at least the most stressful. I know people expect a simple, one-word reply, like, “oyster.” Foolish. (No no, art I make is foolish.) “Don’t be afraid to make art in vain!” a famous artist said.

Another tough Q: “How are you doing?” When the question is asked, which is pretty often, I think: WWDHD?

This guy wouldn’t dare accuse David of being unserious, considering David totally teaches and has an institutional survey exhibition, the visual arts equivalent of a Selected Poems. Yet I’m not sure I know what to call his “lane.” I don’t think it really matters. Well I believe he would love to call a lane. Helloooo? Lane? How are you doing? Great! Yeah!

David steals a spoon from a restaurant, and that’s a piece (I participated by taking a spoon from Denny’s and gifting it to David). When he drives around LA at midnight, delivering books to friends’ houses, it’s the work. When he wants to celebrate his birthday by having guests create a sculpture for every year he’s been alive[1] (I made a clay taco), people participate enthusiastically.

When he posts about how he and his beautiful daughters walk backwards upon leaving the beach, repeating, “goodbye ocean, goodbye ocean!” for as long as they can, that’s of course art for life’s sake. David is busy making art because he’s busy living.

I’ve never met someone like David, whose life is so fully and purely and immediately and unpretentiously and fluxusly and stealthily art. There are no pretexts or lofty artist statements, only 2am taco runs and peregrinations (walks!) across LA, down Sunset, with nothing but a pencil and paper, or marker and political will.

His work moves me to tears. Me, too. Same. And his words. (All sigh.)

In the room: Mail art, textiles, paintings, poems, sounds, shells, desert sand in glass, bells, language in neon, descriptions in that typeface, snapshots, and photographs by others of friends (I, Sophia) all somehow encapsulate the unspeakability of distance, longing, memory, and pleasure. Like the simple pleasure of spontaneously driving to the Angeles National Forest at 1 in the morning with us who want to see the Northern Lights, or the pleasure of looking at the same sky when you are being and living on opposite sides of the world. Hi, DH. Where are you?

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[1] The artist claims on his website to have been born in 1992 (another work) (here is to mothers) (the year punk broke … or was that 1991?). In a slanted light of effect of birth, living is the subject of David’s survey exhibition, being living, at JOAN today, as you are reading.

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Exhibition Design by Aviva Rubin
Graphic Design by Tereza Ruller
Production and Fabrication by Ian Page
Special thanks to Anne Ellegood, François Ghebaly, Laurel De George, R F Jefferies, Kathleen Kim, January Parkos Arnall, Lia Trinka-Browner, Francesca Sonora, Sarah Stocker, and Anuradha Vikram