Press Release by Depart Foundation
Los Angeles - Depart Foundation is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of works by Los Angeles based artist Marc Horowitz. Curated by Nicola Ricciardi, Interior, Day (A Door Opens), on view October 8 - December 19, 2015, will feature new paintings and sculpture. With a prescient instinct for the untapped cultural potential of populist mediums, notably Internet culture, commercial advertising and the entertainment industry, Horowitz looks to establish a social connection and reciprocity between viewer and artist.
In this new body of work, Horowitz stages encounters between the high and low, and the old and new, conflating art historical references and typologies in a mash-up of thrift store chintz and idiosyncratic commentary. Often funny, irreverently bawdy and even scatological, Horowitz’s sculptures start with formal references to Classical statuary which are then playfully corrupted with the inclusion of junky every day objects; everything from plastic cups to ceramic budgies and clown figurines.
Horowitz’s paintings are executed on canvas with a combination of oil, charcoal, pastel and acrylic spray paint. Combining abstract expressionist markmaking, vibrant color, and cartoonish shorthand, his works feel haphazard and precise, combining the best aspects of spontaneous notation and deliberate composition. Concerned with conjuring an experiential context beyond the immediate frame of the art object, his aesthetic never veers too far away from a cinematic proposition. The title Interior, Day (A Door Opens) conjures a mise en scène, encouraging the viewer to insert themselves into the narratives offered by this irreverent storyteller. The titles of the artworks themselves are drawn from screenplays for The Matrix and Tarkovsky’s Solaris, and are intended to reinforce the willfully awkward and wonderfully playful displacements that Horowitz encourages through his works.
Horowitz has lived by popular vote--crowdsourcing an entire month of his life--traveled the country dining with strangers, taken a virtual cross-country road trip using Google maps, handed out blank sheets of paper as free ideas, and run errands in San Francisco on a mule - all in service of his experimental social practice. Using social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter, his video projects, webisodes and social interventions have gone viral, making him an Internet celebrity. Horowitz stages the situational, experimenting with the relegation of control and allowing his projects to evolve on their own terms in the social arena. Constantly interested in the dissimulating mechanisms of commercial consumerism and the unabated acceleration of virtual culture, he offers us clever one-liners that invariably evolve into deeper explorations of consumption, ideology and culture.
An artist book entitled Phillips Auction Catalog published by NERO will be released in conjunction with the exhibition.
ABOUT MARC HOROWITZ Marc Horowitz (b. 1976) is a Los Angeles-based artist working in photography, painting, performance, video, sculpture and social practice. 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. 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 has exhibited both nationally and internationally; notable solo exhibitions include: Moving, Aran Cravey, Los Angeles (2013), The Advice of Strangers, funded by Creative Time, curated by Nato Thompson, web-based (2011), The Me & You Show, The Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2007), The Center for Improved Living, Galerie Analix Forever, Geneva, CH (2007), More Better, AMT Gallery, Lake Como IT (2007), TCFIL, Galerie Nuke, Paris FR (2007). 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, and Yale University. Horowitz teaches a course in new media art at Otis College with his partner, Petra Cortright. www.marchorowitzarchive.com
ABOUT NICOLA RICCIARDI
Nicola Ricciardi (b. 1985) is an art critic and curator. He received an M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) in New York in 2014 and he currently lives in Milan, Italy. His writings have been featured in several art magazines including Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, Mousse Magazine, DIS, Lampoon, and NERO, and he’s editor-in-chief at Carnet de miart, the official digital publication of Milan’s International Modern and Contemporary Art Fair . In 2015 Nicola curated “Samsara” by Kour Pour at Depart Foundation in Los Angeles, California; “DYNASTY” by Patrick Tuttofuoco at Dispari & Dispary Project in Milan/Reggio Emilia; and he’s currently working as Curator Assistant for an exhibition on the work of Betty Woodman at Museo Marini (Florence, September 2015) and a group show on contemporary Italian art at La Triennale di Milano (Milan, November 2015).
ABOUT DEPART FOUNDATION
DEPART Foundation is an emerging arts organization predicated on the discussion, exhibition and production of art and is dedicated to the development and support of contemporary artists whose work and careers are departing from their previous endeavors or predecessors. Since its founding in 2008, DEPART Foundation has served as a catalyst for the Italian art and cultural community, strengthening the dialogue between Italy and the international art world. Like multiple outposts in Europe and U.S., DEPART Foundation has actively encouraged artistic production through sponsorship of young and established artists and the provision of spaces and resources conducive to the research, production and exhibition of new work, and to the presentation of educational and public programs. Some of the most interesting and dynamic artists of our time, from around the world, have been presented for the first time in Rome by DEPART Foundation. They include, among others, Cory Arcangel, Joe Bradley, Nate Lowman, Ryan McGinley, Tauba Auerbach, Darren Bader, Louis Eisner, Roe Ethridge, Sam Falls, Mark Flood, Elias Hansen, Brendan Lynch, Oscar Murillo, Sarah Braman, Seth Price, Jon Rafman, Stephen G. Rhodes, Amanda Ross-Ho, Sterling Ruby, Lucien Smith, Valerie Snobeck and Frances Stark. Marc Horowitz’s Interior, Day (A Door Opens) is Depart Foundation’s fifth exhibition in Los Angeles since September 2015 following presentations by artists Gabriele de Santis, Kour Pour, Grear Patterson and Petra Cortright, now on view through September 12, 2015