David Horvitz at Frieze Projects. Photography by Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal
Frieze New York in under way and alongside the art fair extravaganza there’s also Frieze Projects, which invite emerging artists to bring non-commercial life to the site. Curated by Cecilia Alemani and taking place both inside the fair and around Randall’s Island Park, 2016’s projects include David Horvitz’s project that involves a professional pickpocket secretly dropping miniature sculptures into visitors’ pockets and bags. We spoke to the artist about pickpocketing as a public event and the pickpocket sandwich.
SLEEK: You’re combining sculpture, performance and relational aesthetics. How are we supposed to look at your project?
David Horvitz: There are many different possible ways to experience this. Maybe at some moment you feel that something is in your pocket, and you pull it out wondering what it is. Maybe you don’t even know about the project, or maybe you do. Or maybe you look across the room and you think you see someone put something into someone’s pocket, but you aren’t sure, and you keep going about your way. Or maybe you read about the project, and you think to yourself, there’s a pickpocket, a real pickpocket, wandering around the art fair. And maybe that’s how you “see” it. And maybe you know about the project, and you are at the fair, and you really want to get one. And you keep looking for the pickpocket but you can’t find her. And maybe that’s how someone else sees it, by seeing nothing at all. I also imagine that maybe someone is so distracted that they don’t even realize it’s in their pocket. After the fair they go to dinner, and to a party, and then to another party, constantly running around, and they get home really late and throw their clothes on the floor. And a week later they are at the laundromat and they pull their clothes out of the laundry and the find something in the machine and wonder where it came from.
How did you find a professional pick pocket and why don’t you do it yourself?
We made some phone calls…
I would have done it if I was trained. The person we found is an expert. They are professional. They’ve been doing it for years… It requires skill. I don’t want a confrontation to happen. I intend that this happens with stealth. If I did it would be clumsy, and it would be more of a kind of performance where people become aware of it because I am not trained…
Do you have any expectation from this project? What if visitors react aggressively?
I have no idea. The pickpocket is good. I trust them that they can pull this off. But this will also happen during the whole fair, and you aren’t always perfect. So, I don’t know what will happen if someone catches him. Or, what if he gets greedy and decides to take a wallet instead of putting the sculpture in? I trust that the pickpocket knows what to do!
You’ve dealt with issues concerning the concept of stealing before. What draws you to that?
What I like about pickpocketing is that it happens in public. It’s not a private event. You just aren’t aware of it if the pickpocket is good. So it becomes about attention, and operating in this space of inattention. The fair is filled with so much stuff calling for your attention – art, fashion, people, etc… And so the pickpocket operates in plane sight in the shadows of the fair. I also like this figure of the trickster, who is indifferent the rules, who creates his or her own logic, who comes in a disguise and is hidden in plain site, and subverts the exiting order.
David Horvitz sketch for Sleek
Could you tell us more about the sketch you did for us?
I made a sandwich for Court St Grocer, who is a vendor at the fair. It is the pickpocket sandwich, all with ingredients from cities that are notorious for their pickpockets. Athens… Paris… Rome… Florence… Barcelona… So as you can tell, it’s going to be quite a good sandwich! It comes in a pita, which is a reference to the pocket, but also that Athens is on the top 10 list of pickpocketing cities. And it will come with a sprig of rosemary.
Frieze New York takes place until 8 May 2016