Artist Says LA Billboard Reproduces His Textual content With out Permission


LOS ANGELES — Final Friday morning, July 26, artist David Horvitz was strolling across the Sawtelle neighborhood in West Los Angeles, an space with an extended Japanese-American historical past, when he noticed a billboard above a former ironmongery store with a paragraph of textual content on it.

After re-reading it a number of occasions, Horvitz realized that he himself had written it in 2009 as a part of a year-long mission that used electronic mail and Tumblr to disseminate texts and directions to his viewers, recalling the free-floating artwork experiments of the Fluxus motion. Though the unique Tumblr weblog has since evaporated into the web ether, a few of its content material has been re-posted elsewhere on-line and on social media.

“What was it doing on a billboard?” Horvitz puzzled. 

What it was doing was selling 222, a mysterious firm that seems to match teams of vetted strangers and convey them collectively for public experiences. “This isn’t a courting app,” its web site reads. “222 is a chance to decide on likelihood … Simply say ‘sure’ and discover the possibility encounters you’d have by no means skilled.” (222 has not responded to Hyperallergic’s request for remark.)

The artist posted about his discovering on Instagram, and in keeping with feedback, the billboard has been up for over a 12 months; it was nonetheless on view as of this text’s publication, as verified by Hyperallergic. Horvitz’s title shouldn’t be on it.

David Horvitz’s authentic Tumblr publish from 2009 (picture courtesy David Horvitz)

Horvitz is one thing of a trickster whose work usually performs with concepts round possession,  appropriation, entry, and mental property. 

Final 12 months, the property of the late French artist André Cadere denounced the artist’s choice to mount an unsanctioned exhibition of Cadere’s work in his Los Angeles backyard. Horvitz argued that he was merely honoring Cadere’s personal subversive strategies, which concerned bringing his personal work to reveals of different artists and putting his signature painted wood bars all through the city panorama, nicely outdoors a positive artwork context. 

“You don’t do a Cadere present and ask for permission,” Horvitz mentioned on the time. “It’s a must to do it with out permission from the property. From the gallery. It’s a must to go towards those that attempt to ‘handle’ him. To handle his narrative. It’s a must to go towards his codification.” 

Horvitz added one other mischievous wrinkle after the present closed, when he printed up playing cards that learn: “Mr. Horvitz has not organized any exhibition of André Cadere or offered any of the artist’s work final week in Los Angeles.”

T-shirt printed with a cease-and-desist letter David Horvitz acquired from legal professionals representing Yoko Ono and the property of John Lennon (picture courtesy David Horvitz)

In 2023, Horvitz created t-shirts printed with the phrase “John Lennon Broke Up Fluxus,” cheekily paying homage to his inventive predecessor Yoko Ono whereas flipping the misogynistic clarification for the Beatles’s demise on its head. The gallery promoting the shirts acquired a cease-and-desist letter from legal professionals representing Yoko Ono and the property of John Lennon, alleging trademark violation. Horvitz responded by reproducing the legal professionals’ letter on one other t-shirt.

As for the 222 billboard, Horvitz sees some resonance with the way in which he incorporates likelihood and concepts in his apply, albeit with one main distinction: “All this stuff had been dumped on the web, like a bottle within the sea, and so they find yourself someplace,” Horvitz advised Hyperallergic. “It is a business firm although. If it was one other artist doing it, recycling it into an paintings, that’s completely different, however that is an advert marketing campaign, principally carried out by me.”

After seeing the billboard, Horvitz posted an open letter to 222 on Instagram: “This morning I noticed you used my paintings in your billboard on Sawtelle Boulevard. This paintings has a one-million greenback licensing charge.”

He’s awaiting their response.



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