David Schwartz approaches sculpture as a form of listening. His translucent boomboxes operate like temporal, Proustian portals where sound and memory dance in the light. In Minneapolis he was a young musician studying art; but he left school when he ended up in Prince’s world, recording at Paisley Park and performing with him. While professionally he went on to spend two decades designing visuals for outfits from Marvel to Netflix and Rock the Bells, those heady years at Paisley Park still ring in everything he does—including and especially his latest project, Music as Medication, debuting at LVMH The Studio Miami during Art Basel Week 2025.
As each individual Rhyme Capsule sculpture arranges vintage cassette spines into a slow-building sequence—a horizontal score encased in resin or crystal, catching and scattering light with a beckoning prismatic clarity—Schwartz says that, “the part that excites me most is when I’ve been trying to figure out a certain piece for years and then suddenly I know it’s ready.”The large-scale boomboxes have the presence of cozy monuments; the minis constellate into something more like jewels or amulets. The pill pieces shift the idea into another register, each one an empathetic microdose of a specific year, a particular album, and a burnished emotion.
One work that is most personal to Schwartz is Dark Side of the Moon. “Summer of ‘88,” he says. “I’d just moved to Minnesota to live with my dad. He had a Jeep Wrangler, and we’d ride around St. Paul all summer with the top off. Every time I see that cassette, it brings me right back.” And he relishes hearing from friends and collectors who have their own deep memory jolts with the work. “A father bought one of the big Hip-Hop capsules so his kids could have visual access to all the artists he grew up on,” Schwartz fondly recalls. The work carries that warmth forward—reminders of the artist’s and his whole generation’s quirky design obsessions, formative listening, and the shift from grief to growth. Furthermore, returning to physical making after years in design has thrown that door open wide again. “I can go anywhere I want with this, and it fills the same creative void I miss from my music days.”
