Exhibition

Jonathan Horowitz
The Jonathan Horowitz Show

Greene Naftali, New York

Press Release


Jonathan Horowitz, Installation view, The Jonathan Horowitz Show, Greene Naftali, New York, 2000

The Jonathan Horowitz Show

March 31* - April 29, 2000

*Opening Friday evening, March 31st, 6-8 pm

The Greene Naftali Gallery will present a video and sound installation by Jonathan Horowitz opening March 31st and continuing through April 29th, 2000. The exhibition entitled "The Jonathan Horowitz Show" is a form of autobiography in which the artist creates a portrait of himself through sound, image and text. This is the artist’s second exhibition at Greene Naftali. His work is currently on view at PS 1 Contemporary Art Center in "Greater New York" at Thread Waxing Space in "Gym Culture" at SMAK in Ghent in "Over the Edges" curated by Jan Hoet, "Zeitwenden" at Kunstmuseum Bonn and in "Regarding Beauty" at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Horowitz lives and works in New York.

"The Jonathan Horowitz Show" presents a moving portrait of a young artist. Playing with the conventions of TV documentary and celebrity autobiography, Horowitz creates his own biography through multiple video/sound components which relay particular memories. Seven video monitors represent the stages of his life beginning at the age of two moving through childhood, teenage years, young adulthood and his present life. Each monitor has a sequence of ten memories which range in degrees of specificity and ambiguity, such as "Riding in a car, a pot with a roast in boiling grease turns over on Craig Davis, covering his body with third degree burns", "my sister", "franks and beans and aspirin" "my father telling me that I do not have the ability to become a concert pianist" and "I think I have Aids." Text alternates with pop culture images juxtaposing shared public memories (a Ramones song, a publicity shot of Montgomery Cliff, and an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show) with formative personal experiences, often sexual or familial.

A soundtrack pervades the room of the artist speaking. The recording was made as close to the opening of the exhibition as possible, and while it is unrehearsed and unscripted, it is not entirely un-self conscious. The artist speaks at random about the making of this show, his political views (which relate specifically to the exhibition announcement which says VOTE GORE and doubles as a campaign poster), about art in general, conversations with friends, and his awareness of the recording process. The monologue is unedited and full of pauses, sighs and the sounds of thinking.

The anxiety and desire for self expression/exposure is deeply and unavoidably embedded in the installation. The voice of the artist states “I don’t really want to talk about myself. Reveal things about myself. I think… I don’t want to be ashamed to either. To some extent you can’t really help what you’re like.” The failure of the installation to tell us who the artist is creates a psychological void for the viewer and calls into question the idea of self construction and the meaning of self expression.

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