David Horvitz: see the sea being

With Sena Başöz, Julien Bismuth, Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Javier Cruz, Krysten Cunningham, Sébastien Delire, Kasia Fudakowski, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Stefanie Hessler, Vlatka Horvat, Jesi Khadivi, Margarida Mendes, Adrien Missika, Ed Steck, Marianna Vecellio and Chiara Vecchiarelli

“Write a sentence on a wall as if you were writing in sand on a beach. Erase the sentence as if the waves washed over your writing. Write another sentence.”

Written by David Horvitz, these instructions are the principles on which his new work relies, see the sea being, commissioned in the context of a collective exhibition to be taking place on an island in 2021. For Studio K, the artist has arranged a collective reading of the more than 150 sentences that compose his piece. The sound work, produced at distance, across the continents, remains as the trace of an intimate and collective performance.

Conceptual, poetic, the work of Horvitz (born in 1982, lives and works in Los Angeles) flows into language, time and networks. Subjective, personal, unclassifiable, it uses books, gastronomy, Internet, photographs, performances, mail art, rubber stamps, sound and natural environments.

The sea has been a frequent subject, or entity with which the artist has been working recently. From invitations to listen to and meditate with the ocean in Public Access (Palos Verdes) (2011-2014), to perform, to sound it (When the ocean sounds, 2019) it has been a way to explore, among other ideas, the experience, the connection, the erasure of distances that separates us from places, people or histories.

see the sea being, 2021

158 sentences, writing and erasing on wall

This work was made for the Fondation Carmignac on Porquerolles island, France, as part of The Imaginary Sea exhibition (20.05.21 – 17.10.21) curated by Chris Sharp.