Today is Friday.

It is true that I wrote most of David Horvitz’s text pieces from the years 2011-2022. Then, something happened. Things always happen. Things always happen around Mr. Horizinv. See? It’s almost like “horizon” – something important to David and his work, sometimes, though, there is a confusion, like a misspelling, or mis-identified subject, or invisible landscapes or borders, that can be often explained away as mistakes if one is ever caught crossing the line into the world of the other. See? The other. It happens again. It’s another important thing in Dave’s work. The other. He is often depicted as the other in his own work, but, in reality, the other is the surrounding miasmic orbit of friends, artists, chefs, people that are important, people gathered at a site, police, buildings like museums and galleries, banks, oceans, curators, collectors, family members, cats, passersby, unexpected and unwilling participants; joke’s on you. I watched a film about caterpillars, it was old, 1930s, projected on nitrate film with stark green in the film; nothing about this film made me think of David Horvats or his art. However, it made me think of David Horvitz the banana slug licker. Slugs, caterpillars, getting stuck behind a tractor delivering a rare tree descending a one-way slope at dangerous grades. In Horvittz own words: “Gifts represent objects or things that were given to people” (from artist voicemail). I wrote two press releases for work in this show: the lights being turned out in Paris, the melted bell, maybe something else. A lot of other artists’(‘s) works. Artists have back pain, so it’s important to stretch. Stretching out David’s work and re-glomming it up in a ball is a way to approach his art. To truly experience art by David Horvitz take a walk outside, go to a garden, drive 150mph on winding back roads screaming at each other, steal something, eat something, annoy somebody. I received all of this information directly from the artist David Horvitz through psychic telepathy, all of the artists’ words and thoughts dictated verbatim, transcribed by myself as a living automaton authoring all written art, language art by David Horvitz. If you wait too long, it will disappear.

―Ed Steck

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More information on the upcoming public programs and publication coming soon!

This exhibition is part of JOAN’s second Chapter of programming, which runs from April 2024 through August 2025, and brings together artists and collectives that explore varying communal structures of intervention and support, as experiments towards liberatory futures.

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David Horvitz was born in Los Angeles, where he currently lives and works. His multidisciplinary practice explores systems of language, time, and networks, often questioning the distances—geographical, temporal, and interpersonal—that separate people and places. Using images, text, and objects, his works move autonomously through various contexts, frequently entering the intimate and everyday.

His work has been exhibited at institutions including the High Line Art, New York; MoMA, New York; the New Museum, New York; SF MoMA, San Francisco; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; HangarBicocca, Milan; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Albertinum and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden; Wende Museum, Los Angeles; La Criée Centre for Contemporary Art, Rennes; S.M.A.K., Ghent; MOCAK, Kraków; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Avignon; CRAC Alsace, Altkirch; and the Brooklyn Museum, among others. Horvitz’s work is included in numerous public and private collections, such as MoMA, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin; Fonds d’art contemporain, Paris; SF MoMA, San Francisco; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, France; and the Nomas Foundation, Rome. He holds an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

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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