DAVID HORVITZ THE HOUR OF THE STAR (AFTER CLARICE LISPECTOR)

de boer (Los Angeles) is pleased to present The Hour of The Star, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based David Horvitz, his first solo with the gallery. Horvitz engages with concepts of faith, astrology, consumption, and circulation in this photographic project. In the City of Angels, the stars are hidden out of view above a blanket of light pollution. What is lost is not only our relationship to the night and our body’s circadian rhythms; to the starlight itself, and the capacity of our attention to these subtleties, a diversity of varying colors and temperatures and luminosities. Or to the intergalactic and timescales beyond our own lives and the societies and civilizations we inhabit. What is also lost is a way of telling stories, and a way of reading stories, and the characters of these stories. Like the story of the crow sent by Apollo to fetch a cup of water that is distracted by a tree full of ripe figs. The crow is then banished for eternity to the stars as penance for its neglected duties. There are forty-two animals in the eighty-eight star constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union. Most of these are from the Greek and Mesopotamian constellations (the dolphin, the swan, the lion...). Others were inventions by European astronomers in later centuries (the fox, the fly, the crane...). Hidden somewhere in a cosmological landscape, in forests of light no longer visible, these animals are hiding. I hole punched these animal shapes one-by-one into forty-two one-dollar bills. They are small drawings that become visible when held to a light source: a minor defacement, yet the value is intact. The Treasury states that if more than 50% of a note is identifiable as United States currency its value has not been compromised. I drove through the streets of LA, sometimes at night and sometimes in the day, stopping at street food vendors. They were mostly taco trucks and taco stands. I was sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. At each location I used one of the constellation dollars and purchased something. I wanted to put the dollars into circulation to be passed from hand to hand. I then wandered to the next spot, sometimes with no planned route, as if mapping the city through tacos. I titled the artwork ‘Constellatory Insertions Into Angelic Orbits’ as a reference to one of Cildo Meireles’ ‘Insertions Into Ideological Circuits,’ banknotes stamped with messages and put back into circulation during the time of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Maybe, when verifying the authenticity of the banknote, when it is held up to the sky, as if orienting them into position, these animals emerge in a moment of distraction. In the city of Angels, where are the stars?