snap+share: transmitting photographs from mail art to social networks
(Group exhibition)
Curated by Clément Chéroux
SFMOMA, San Francisco
31 March – 4 August 2019

Spanning the history of mail art to social networks, snap+share at SFMOMA presents a variety of artists working in various media, from framed paper-based art to immersive installations. Exploring how networks are created through the act of sending images out into the world, this exhibition reveals just how those networks have changed in the age of the Internet.

For the show David Horvitz presents his work “241543903”. For this work he instructed his audience on Tumblr to post a picture of their head in a refrigerator and tag the seemingly random number 241543903 in April 2009. The number Horvitz picked to title his work was a combination of the serial number of his refrigerator and the barcodes on a bag of edamame and a package of frozen soba noodles he was keeping there. The pictures soon went viral and turned into a meme in 2009 which was popular in Brazil, Japan and then spread on Facebook.

David Horvitz, “241543903”, 2012-ongoing, Google research images project exhibited at “snap+share: transmitting photographs from mail art to social networks”, 2019 (installation view, SFMOMA); photo: © Matthew Millman Photography
David Horvitz, “241543903”, 2012-ongoing, Google research images project exhibited at “snap+share: transmitting photographs from mail art to social networks”, 2019 (installation view, SFMOMA); photo: © Matthew Millman Photography
David Horvitz, “241543903”, 2012-ongoing, Google research images project exhibited at “snap+share: transmitting photographs from mail art to social networks”, 2019 (installation view, SFMOMA); photo: © Matthew Millman Photography