by lora kolodny
You may have heard of new media artist, sculptor, printmaker, photographer, painter (etc.) Jonathan Horowitz, perhaps been lucky enough to see his work in the MoMA collection, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, or Migros museum in Zurich.
ACROSS THE WIRE BY BLUE STATES:
This season, Horowitz has had a lot to say about voting, politics and media in the United States. Mostly, he’s said it by co-opting images from contemporary broadcast and daily, print-news outlets, and classic American kitsch, combining them with searing, and uncomfortable socio-political observations, and smoothing them out with humor, color and formalism at Gavin Brown Enterprises, in New York City’s West Village.
Horowitz’s works, under the show title Obama 08, are on display there until November 15, 2008. He will also have a solo exhibition at P.S.1’s Contemporary Art Center in New York in February 2009, and a solo exhibition in Koln in March 2009.
Horowitz and Gavin Brown Gallery booked Obama 08 in advance of November 4. New York Magazine’s Vulture column quipped that the show was “electioneering.” Perhaps, though, it was simply a confident, and smart move: had the election fallen to McCain, the artist and gallery had to believe this show would retain its formal merits, and humor. Though maybe it would leave Obama-supporting viewers with a more bitter after taste, it would be a show to see regardless of political outcomes.
Among the show’s highlights are: the digital print in a horizontally-split frame, entitled “CBS Evening News/www.britneycrotch.org” an arrangement of plastic figurines on a table entitled “We the People Are People Too,” and the 43-part digital print, framed series “Obama 08.”
The first piece is comprised of a portrait of Katie Couric at work on top, and the infamous naughty bits of Britney Spears, photographed by cruel and voracious paparazzi below. It begs us to consider how seriously we should take news, at all, while playing tricks with perspective and color that make a garish single figure of Couric and Spears.
“We The People…” takes plastic figurines, the sort that served as an office party booby prize or a cheap last-minute Father’s day gift in the 70s and 80s, and turns their shoddy, iconic shapes into representatives of fallen political figures, criminals, and everyday, stereotyped people. A pretty hippie chick, cast in plastic, is adorned with a small piece of vegetation, and labeled “Feminists are People Too.” A statuette featuring a kid giving another kid candy is labeled “Drug Dealers are People Too.” A little frown-faced guy has had a screw pushed into his gut, and been labeled “White Collar Workers Are People Too.” The tiny figures are laid out on a recycled plastic table before the show’s title series, “Obama 08.”
This title piece portrays the 43 presidential personages (one served two terms, Obama is in fact the 44th) up to and including Obama in digital reproductions of their White House, traditional, painted portraits. Obama appears in a digital photograph, with crisp edges, and brighter tones. Along this visual timeline, Horowitz has printed amendments to the Constitution that were written to ostensibly protect voters’ rights.
VALERIE PLAME BY THE DECEMBERISTS:
It is simultaneously depressing and uplifting to witness the progress of the nation toward being able to elect a bi-racial / African American in one scan of a gallery room. However, Horowitz’s series wraps around a space that hosts a giant, bonded bronze sculpture of Hilary Clinton, with the label “Hillary Clinton is a Person Too,” begging the question “Are we all better now?” while answering it too, “absolutely not.”
A juxtaposition of history with news is not the main reason to appreciate Horowitz’s Obama 08, however. The artist makes use of duality, formally, in all of his pieces in ways both subtle and obvious. His use of split-shapes, his ability to combine found objects and images in frames and areas he has constructed, result in producing an eerie sense of balance and tension. So does Horowitz’s use of primaries red and blue, and near but not total lack of inclusion of yellow, and secondary colors. The pieces, especially presented at once, are overwhelming, and inviting, exciting and exasperating, appealing and revolting, much like American politics, and the election season itself.
