MARC HOROWITZ "(COMPLAINING): IT’S SURPRISINGLY BEAUTIFUL IN HERE"

Johannes Vogt Gallery is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Marc Horowitz, "(Complaining): It’s surprisingly beautiful in here.” Known for his video, web-based and performance work, Horowitz has recently translated his practice into different media. Titles for the paintings and sculptures brought together in this show are derived from Tarkovsky movies (“Stalker” and “Nostalgia”) as well as “Transformers” — high meets low, classicist Old Master paintings and busts meet New Age, oil-stick impasto and neon glazed ceramics.

Horowitz approaches painting from a cinematographic standpoint, similar to the process of video making — from creative writing and mood boards, to casting, location scouting, propping, dialogue adaptation, establishing mise-en-scène, improvisation and editing — he chooses characters and backgrounds of display that fluctuate between landscapes, interiors and still lifes while enacting personas that could range from anywhere between Greek goddesses to the weather man.

Inspiration and motivation for Horowitz arises from the history of film just as much as from everyday life. Horowitz’s main backdrop and constant source of ideas is the ever-sprawling, surprising, grandiose yet banal scenery provided by his life in Los Angeles. The city and its people serve as a perpetual stream of stories and stages, a living collage that the artist turns into his own visual language.

After having painted in total secrecy for about 17 years Horowitz has come to realize that his disguised painting practice is able to give a public voice to a substantial part of his creative process. The artist is looking to accomplish object-based artworks that are richer and more vivid than can be represented by film or video. Painting and sculpture mark the ultimate complement to his time-based work by collapsing various moments in time into one simultaneous impression. The result is a condensed, yet open-ended narrative.

Horowitz states that “the paintings should make the viewer feel like tripping on a crack in the sidewalk — that brief moment of loss and uncertainty, then recuperation; all within a split second, but everything plays out.” His two- and three-dimensional objects allow for the forming of a story in a non-linear, non-time-based form while engaging a dialogue between digital image-making on the screen both in video editing and image processing with traditional painting and sculpting techniques.

MARC HOROWITZ (b. 1976) is a Los Angeles-based artist working in painting, performance, video, photography, and social practice. In a practice that combines traditional drawing, commercial photography, and new media, Horowitz turns American culture on its head to explore the idiosyncrasies of entertainment, class, commerce, failure, success, and personal meaning. Using visual puns, large-scale participatory projects, and viral social pranks, Horowitz creates environments of high energy that lift the most mundane to the status of grand event in complex interplays between subject, viewer, and participant. Horowitz holds a master’s degree in art from the University of Southern California, and bachelor’s degrees in art and marketing from San Francisco Art Institute, and Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

Horowitz has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Analix Forever in Geneva, Switzerland, The Depart Foundation in Los Angeles, The Hayward Gallery in London, and at New Langton Arts in San Francisco. He has received a project grant from Creative Time for their first online-based project. His work has been featured extensively on local and national television including ABC News, NPR Weekend Edition, CBS Inside Edition CBS, CNN American Morning, and on NBC’s The Today Show. He has taught at the University of Southern California and lectured at The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California Institute of the Arts, Stanford University, Yale University and a course in new media art at Otis College with his partner, Petra Cortright.