New Billboards by David Hockney Will Be On Display All Over the World

Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long, (2020), David Hockney. David Hockney

The artist David Hockney occupies a unique role within the art world. In 2018, his 1972 masterwork Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at auction at Christie’s for $90.3 million, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist. For years, however, Hockney has found an endless wellspring of inspiration in an unlikely source: his iPad, which he’s been using to create entire gallery shows and divisive New Yorker covers at an impressive clip. Now, in collaboration with Times Square Arts’ New York Midnight Moment program, Hockney is debuting new video work created on his iPad that will be displayed on billboards in  London, New York, Seoul and Tokyo in May.

The video work, entitled Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long, shows an animated sunrise nonetheless hovering over a sky that’s clearly in the process of a sunset. The contrasting times of day lend the piece an otherworldly quality, as though we’re looking at a vista on another planet. The billboard is also the product of a partnership between Times Square Arts and CIRCA, a new platform dedicated to showcasing digital art in the public sphere.

“There has never been a better time for this shining image of hope, which links people across borders and continents to celebrate the arrival of spring,” Josef O’Connor, the Artistic Director of CIRCA, said in a statement. “We are especially grateful to David Hockney, a master in exploring the boundaries of new media, for allowing CIRCA to present his work in such a bold and democratic way, connecting Piccadilly Lights with screens all around the world.”

Specifically, the billboard will be on display in Times Square, Piccadilly Lights in London, at the Coex K-POP Square LED screen in Seoul and at Yunika Vision in Japan.