David Horvitz: Maranasati

1. A corpse that is swollen, blue and festering.

2. A corpse that is being eaten by crows, hawks, cats, vultures, dogs, jackals, different kinds of worms, and mushrooms.

3. A corpse that is reduced to a skeleton together with some flesh and blood held in by the tendons.

4. A corpse that is reduced to a blood-besmeared skeleton without flesh but held in by tendons.

5. A corpse that is reduced to a skeleton held in by the tendons but without flesh and not besmeared with blood.

6. A corpse that is reduced to bones gone loose, scattered in all directions.

7. A corpse that is reduced to bones, white in color like a conch.

8. A corpse that is reduced to bones more than a year old, heaped together.

9. A corpse that is reduced to bones gone rotten and become dust, blown away with the wind and inhaled in the breath.

Edward Cella Art & Architecture is pleased to announce Maranasati by David Horvitz, an exhibition including hand-blown sea glass sculptures, collaborative sound performances with Xiu Xiu front-man Jamie Stewart, and sprouting avocado trees.

On exhibit will be nine hand-blown sea glass sculptures from Horvitz’s ongoing series started in 2014.

As Triple Canopy writes:

[These works begin] with Horvitz combing various beaches in 2014 in search of sea glass—remnants of bottles, windows, screens, sconces, or fishing floats that had been submerged in the ocean. In the course of decades or centuries, waves and sand smooth the surface of the glass and erase its structure, producing pebble-like forms with a naturally frosted finish...The fragments were then melted and reblown to form new vessels. Because different pieces of glass have different molecular structures, and thus varying rates of expansion and contraction, the sculptures are likely to change in the coming years or decades: cracks may form, shards may peel away, and repair (or acquiescence) of these transformations may be necessary. For the same reason, the form of the sculptures is often determined as much by the qualities of the glass— its distinct malleability or rigidity.

Nine glass-works will be displayed on custom pedestals that are scattered across the gallery. During the course of the exhibition, Horvitz will be joined by Jamie Stewart for nine performances of improvised electronic sounds. The performances will use the nine lines of the of the Buddhist death awareness visualization practice known as Maranasati, as their score. Each performance will be positioned in a different location in the gallery, offering each artwork its own composition.

Avocado trees will be growing in the gallery.

The Maranasati performances at Edward Cella Art & Architecture are the first of The Germs, a series of three collaborations by David Horvitz and Jamie Stewart in Los Angeles this summer. On August 26, during Friday Flights at the Getty Center, they will perform on 43 wind chimes. In September, they will present a new performance at ARTBOOK at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel.

Performances dates and times:

8/6 - 6:30pm - (A corpse that is swollen, blue and festering.)

8/6 - 7:30pm - (A corpse that is being eaten by crows, hawks, cats, vultures, dogs, jackals, different kinds of worms, and mushrooms.)

8/16 - 11:08am - (A corpse that is reduced to a skeleton together with some flesh and blood held in by the tendons.)

8/16 - 1:10pm - (A corpse that is reduced to a blood-besmeared skeleton without flesh but held in by the tendons.)

8/17 - 11:12am - (A corpse that is reduced to a skeleton held in by the tendons but without flesh and not besmeared with blood.)

8/17 - 1:01pm - (A corpse that is reduced to bones gone loose, scattered in all directions.)

8/18 - 12:01pm - (A corpse that is reduced to bones, white in color like a conch.)

8/19 - 11:48am - (A corpse that is reduced to bones more than a year old, heaped together.)

8/19 - 1:11pm - (A corpse that is reduced to bones gone rotten and become dust, blown away with the wind and inhaled in the breath.)

ABOUT DAVID HORVITZ

David Horvitz uses art books, photography, performance art, glass, and mail art as mediums for his work. He is also known for his work in the virtual sphere. He was recently artist in residence at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, New York City and has recently relocated to Los Angeles. In 2015 he was named a United States Artists fellow. Horvitz has had solo exhibitions at Fotomuseum Winterthur, and tongewölbe T25, Ingolstadt; Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; New Museum, New York; Jan Mot, Brussels, Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw; Peter Amby, Copenhagen; Art Basel, 2013; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Chert. Group exhibitions include: MoMA, New York; Bielefelder Kunstverein, Kunstverein Nürnberg; Murray Guy, New York; Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen; Crac Alsace, Altkirsch; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn.

In Public Access (2010), Horvitz took photos of himself at public beaches along the California coast. He then posted the corresponding image on the Wikipedia page of each beach. This aroused suspicion of Horvitz’s motives and led to debate among Wikipedia moderators, who ultimately deleted the images. In 2014, Horvitz presented “Gnomons” at the New Museum, New York, which included Let Us Keep Our Own Noon, a performance in which forty-seven people ring handbells made from a melted down eighteenth century French church bell at local noon, when the sun is at its highest point. For his 2014 solo exhibition at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, Horvitz traveled by boat to the longitude line that divides the time zones of California and Alaska and collected seawater. He then presented this transplanted water in handmade glass vessels arranged in a north-south line in the gallery, effectively displacing standardized time. Horvitz’s Mood Disorder (2015), which tracks a stock image of a depressed person made by (and picturing) the artist as it circulates online, was recently on view in “Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This past spring, Horvitz presented solo exhibitions at Librairie Yvon Lambert, Paris; Chert, Berlin; and Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, Oregon; and a site-specific work for Frieze Projects at Frieze New York.

ABOUT JAMIE STEWART

Jamie Stewart (b.1978 Los Angeles) founded the musical group Xiu Xiu in 2002 and began to waste his life.