February 8, 1989: David mounts his largest solo show, “In the Shadow of Forward Motion,” at P·P·O·W. gallery. He creates new paintings and photo pieces for the exhibition. Encouraged by Gary Schneider and John Erdman, he experiments in Hujar’s darkroom. He begins juxtaposing multiple images against each other in a single work. Biographer Cynthia Carr writes “David had again become a poet. Maybe he’d never stopped being one, as he worked to get disparate images to resonate.”
Among other works, he displays: Weight of the Earth Part 1; Weight of the Earth Part 2, Spirituality (Paul Thek); Where I’ll go After I’m Gone; The Ant Series, The Sex Series (For Marion Scemama), Untitled (Buffalos Falling); Something from Sleep III (For Tom Rauffenbart), Something from Sleep IV; Fear of Monkeys/Evolution.
David pounded out a seventeen page catalog for the show on the gallery typewriter hours before the opening.
