DAVID HORVITZ, Studio Rent Editions/August, 2015
10,4 x 24 cm / 10,2 x 15 cm
hand stamped envelope, five photographs, 6 parts
signed, numbered, dated
edition 10
published by the artist
‘My studio rent edition series are a series of monthly editions that subsidizes my monthly studio rent. They are all an edition of 10 and sold for 1/10th of my studio rent. Most of previous ones are sold out (some are available at my gallery in Berlin). Each month I send out an email describing the new piece, and you can purchase one, and it is then mailed to you. Maybe this series could also be seen as a monthly mail art project as well.’
“…This is the email description for the August 2015 studio rent edition.
For an exhibition last year in Santa Barbara, California, I had 30 copies of my Public Access artist-book bound to library standards in an archival blue material with gold foil stamping by Trappist monks in Oregon. I drove up the California coast and left these books in local libraries.
The edition is five 4″x6″ photographs in a business envelope. The stamp and signature is on the back of the envelope…”
from an email dated 27 August 2015 of David Horvitz to Kees van Gelder.
DAVID HORVITZ, Studio rent editions, 2015
10,4 x 24 cm / 10,2 x 15 cm
hand stamped envelope / two photographs, 3 parts
signed, numbered, dated
edition 10
published by the artist
‘My studio rent edition series are a series of monthly editions that subsidizes my monthly studio rent. They are all an edition of 10 and sold for 1/10th of my studio rent. Most of previous ones are sold out (some are available at my gallery in Berlin). Each month I send out an email describing the new piece, and you can purchase one, and it is then mailed to you. Maybe this series could also be seen as a monthly mail art project as well.’ The edition for this month is two photographs taken on my friend’s (Julia Weist) property in the Catskill mountains some months apart. I laid my newborn daughter on the ground and surrounded her with Chinese and Japanese Wisteria seeds that I had harvested (against the garden’s policy) at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. I then left the seeds for nature to do its things… The second photograph was made later this summer when the plants began to grow. Hopefully, in the future, these Wisteria plants will continue to grow, and Ela Melanie can visit in late spring when they are all in full bloom with their purple flowers and sweet fragrances, and know that she had been there once….’ from an email of David Horvitz to Kees van Gelder
DAVID HORVITZ, Studio Rent Editions, 2015 (December)
each 12,6 x 17,6 cm, 2 parts
colour photo prints, verso hand stamped
gravel imprints and two scuffings due to postal handling
signed, numbered, dated
edition 10
published by the artist
DAVID HORVITZ, Untitled (sand mailed by the artist’s mother from California), 2013
11 x 14,5 cm / 10,7 x 16,6 cm
stamped address on envelope / plastic bag with sand
unlimited edition
published by the artist
Galerie Chert, Berlin € 50,- July 2015
Untitled (sand mailed by the artist’s mother from California) is a work that consists of a posted envelope of sand from the Californian beach by the artist’s former home, where his mother still resides. Originally the artist’s mother sends this sand by post to the buyer. This same beach and sand is a repetitive motif for Horvitz and has been used for several projects including: Rarely seen Bas Jan Ader, Disappear, Public Access, The Distance of a Day and his Studio Rent Editions.
DAVID HORVITZ, The Distance of the Day, 2013
ca 12,5 x 18 cm, 2 parts
set of leporello postcards, beach sand from Maladives and Los Angeles in cellophane envelopes
edition 25
signed, dated, numbered
‘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.’
DAVID HORVITZ, Take a photograph of your head inside a freezer, 2009
images on internet
On April 6, 2009, New York-based artist David Horvitz posted a picture of himself with his head in a freezer on his Flickr account and invited readers to participate in his DIY work.
