b. 1966, New York
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
Since the early 1990s, Jonathan Horowitz (b. 1966, New York) has made art that combines the imagery and ambivalence of Pop art with the engaged criticality of conceptualism. Often based in both popular commercial and art historical sources, his work across mediums examines links between consumer culture and political consciousness, as well as the political silences of postwar art.
Horowitz’s early artwork, primarily in video, reflects the influences of both experimental film and Hollywood movies. Often taking the form of video sculptures in which consumer televisions are configured on industrial, grey metal stands, the work is rare in its combination of structuralist rigor and deeply felt pathos. Other early works utilize images downloaded from the Internet or simple texts printed on 8.5 by 11-inch office paper in a form of lo-fi, DIY computer art.
In subsequent years, Horowitz employed other mediums—installation, painting, sculpture, photography—to explore subjects ranging from vegetarianism to the American political process. Additionally, Horowitz turned an eye to art history, most notably in a series of paintings based on Roy Lichtenstein’s mirror paintings and a series based on Jasper Johns’s flag paintings. At the same time, Horowitz continued to work in video, weaving together strands of found footage to create complex, multilayered narratives.
Whether through credited assistants, public participation, or curatorial projects, several bodies of work by Horowitz involve the participation of others in their making. For example, his “Dot” making exhibitions have employed the hands of thousands of people in the creation of monumentally scaled painting installations. Characteristic of Horowitz’s practice, such projects reflect a commitment to authorial transparency, political engagement, and a humanist ethos.
Horowitz’s most recent curatorial project, The Future Will Follow the Pasts: An Exhibition by Jonathan Horowitz, situates current social and political crises within the context of the permanent, narrative display of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. The exhibition runs through December 2023.
Solo exhibitions include the curatorial project We Fight to Build a Free World: An Exhibition by Jonathan Horowitz, the Jewish Museum, New York (2020-21); 1612 Dots, The Oculus, World Trade Center, New York (2017); Occupy Greenwich, The Brant Foundation, Connecticut (2016); Your Land/My Land: Election ’12, presented concurrently at seven museums across the US, from the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles to the New Museum, New York (2012); Minimalist Works from the Holocaust Museum, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland (2010-11); Apocalypto Now, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2009); the retrospective, And/Or, MoMA PS1, New York (2009); and Jonathan Horowitz/Silent Movie/MATRIX 151, the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Connecticut (2003).
Horowitz’s work is held in the collections of numerous museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; S.M.A.K (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst), Ghent, Belgium; the Tate, London; and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea.
