David Horvitz

The artistic practice of the U.S. American artist David Horvitz (*1982) is multi-faceted. He works with mail art and sculpture, as well as with text, drawing, and photography. A close relationship to nature defines many works of the artist, who is not only a devoted gardener but whose works also express his fascination with the sky, the sun, the clouds, and the Pacific Ocean, where he lives. For his watercolor series When the Ocean Sounds from 2018, Horvitz used water from the Pacific, mixing it with red, turquoise-blue, and sky-blue inks.

The salt crystals contained in the sea water have settled on the two sheets, lying on the paper either as flat encrustations or as individual, glittering crystals. In places, the salt has soaked up the colored ink, leaving bright spots on the paper that form a blotchy pattern and are reminiscent of a water surface sparkling in the sun. Sunset red seems to have set on the sheet When the Ocean Sounds (Waves), while the cooler colors of the second sheet, When the Ocean Sounds (Large Wave Crashing), evoke associations with the freshness of the ocean.

The sequence of letters stamped onto the sheets echo the sounds of the ocean, its gurgling and murmuring, and the breaking of the waves near the cliffs of Palos Verdes south of Los Angeles. The transcriptions are evocative of concrete poetry and can be understood as a notation which, according to the artist’s wish, are also to be read out aloud and interpreted vocally by the viewers of the sheets.