featuring:
Suzy Poling
David Horvitz

Curated by Gabriel Saloman

I chose to work with Suzy and David because they are both Photographers. At least, they were when I met them. In the time since, they have both found themselves heading off into amazing and diverse trajectories. Though never abandoning photography all together, their practice now includes sound, object making, mail art, collaboration, performance, costuming, and a wide variety of conceptual practices that often touch on the transcendent and metaphysical.

I love photography because of what it shows us about seeing. The depth and potential in a single moment of vision is often lost in the speed and entropy of our daily visual lives. Yet a photograph can extend time to infinity. I believe that even as Suzy and David’s work and practice has evolved and expanded, neither have forfeited their privilege of being the seer, nor a responsibility to bear witness to others.

Instead they have journeyed towards divergent cosmos, the inner and the outer, the micro and the macro. I personally suspect they share a similar goal, but I admire the difference in their pursuits. The result is a polarity that informs itself from different frontiers. What can we learn about ourselves from the great distance that separates us from the other? What can we know about each other that we discover in the depth of self?

Suzy Poling is an artist based in Oakland, CA whose work seeks to develop and research sonic atmospheres visually and aurally through the exploration of different art practices. She has produced extensive photographic work investigating abandoned amusement parks and mental hospitals, where she researches elaborate textures, presence and residue of civil decay and organic life. Her work encompasses installation, sound, fiber art, film and collage often combining elements and functions in both overt and subtle ways. Her musical suite Pod Blotz is interwoven into all of the visual work as it talks about abstraction and mystery of the unseen. Though she may be acting as a witness to the periphery of our human made environment, her work clearly speaks of dream space and locales beyond a veil of reality. Her work may center in her own unconscious, yet the implication is of a world manifested by our collective lucidity.

Suzy has provided details of 4 untitled recent works.

David Horvitz is a NY based artist who combines his constant, almost compulsive act of taking photos of his immediate and often very ordinary surroundings with the gesture of transaction. For varying fees or trade he offers to mail strangers and friends alike photos which document magnificent banalities such as meditation, eating, looking at a sunset, or taking a trip to a strange place. In an era where technology supposedly makes us more connected, David’s art suggests that older forms of mediation can offer new forms of intimacy. David’s gaze is often directed at an invisible universal; a neo-platonic form which is always on the edge of a liminal space right in front of us, if not directly between us and the billions of others that share our world.

David has provided 4 collections of images for our show. All of these images were gleaned from public photo archives such as flickr.

• STOLEN ART – Major works of art, already the possession of the world’s privileged few, are stolen from the private and public sphere every year. These are all images of stolen works of art.
• IRAQ SUNSETS – Soldiers in Iraq have more technology to document their experience than any American force before them. Here are photos of Iraqi sunsets taken by U.S. Soldiers.
• THE MONA LISA – About 6 Million people view the Mona Lisa every year. These are photos they have taken.
• CIA TRAVEL ADVISORY – The CIA warns American citizens against traveling to certain countries. Here are photos of some of these countries – Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka.