"The Aesthetics of Stability" is a testament to the vibrant fate of mundane reality, uniting the experience of Marc Horowitz in an interactive performance art piece and with the lingering presence of classical art. L'Officiel met the artist on the occasion of his solo exhibition  at de boer galerie in Los Angeles.


Marc Horowitz performing "The Aesthetics of Stability"

Marc Horowitz Interview for L&rsquo;Officiel by Jenny Mannerheim 
&nbsp;

L&rsquo;Officiel:&nbsp;Your exhibition&nbsp;is titled &quot;The Aesthetics of Stability&quot; and centers around the ideas of stability and its parallel counterpart instability in both business and interpersonal life.&nbsp;Can you tell us about this new body of work? 
Marc Horowitz:&nbsp;The new work is about how everything is available all the time. How everything pushes itself into the present moment &ndash; like a 16th century painting is somehow now on the same plane as an email from my health insurance company and a video of a dude yelling at a wild turkey from his truck. The Hierarchy is flooded and has lost meaning. This creates unease, burnout, and a form of social schizophrenia. It&rsquo;s a shared instability. Add the pandemic and things get wild. &nbsp; 
On a personal level, I went through a lot of psychic change over the pandemic. In the beginning, I was cool, it was like that twilight zone episode where the dude lives through the H-Bomb drop and comes out of the bank vault where he sheltered and nobody is around; now he can read all the books he wants without being bothered by anyone. I was immensely productive and realized that pre-pandemic I was too busy to acknowledge that I didn&rsquo;t have the space I needed. As time went on, and I sanitized my delivered groceries, became scared of the mail, and invested in an unbelievable amount of canned fish and flour, things got to be really weird. I had a glut of alone time, however it was chocked full of anxiety. So I dove headlong into a program of spiritual growth and learned how to live a better life. I&rsquo;ve since become grateful for the things I do have and not give a fuck about what I don&rsquo;t have or want. It&rsquo;s a nice place to be. It is a stable place amidst a period of great instability. 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;This is your debut show de Boer gallery. How did you meet with gallerist David de Boer? 
MH:&nbsp;A friend of mine brought me by the gallery in September of last year when things kinda half opened. I chatted with David (de boer) for a while and got a good vibe, like we had known each other for a long time. I could just tell they were running on a different wavelength and I wanted to get to know him and the director Jacob Vasa better. I started showing up to the gallery more, which I never do. Galleries tend to be cold and austere and I feel like a nuisance when I show up most of the time. David and I had a phone conversation while I was in Montana and he offered me a show. And here we are.&nbsp; 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;How did you prepare for this exhibition ? 
MH:&nbsp;David and I talked for hours in person and on the phone about my practice, performance, painting&hellip; I proposed no less than seven different shows before landing on the current iteration. I had been working on a series of abstract paintings, but I just didn&rsquo;t feel comfortable doing that. Like it felt lazy and not very interesting to me. They&rsquo;re not bad paintings, but it was almost like I had to make those to see where I could go in the future, a pin in the future.&nbsp; 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;You have been delving back into performance again for the first time in a decade for this show, tell us about your new performance? 
MH:&nbsp;Yes. I took a 14 year hiatus from painting to return to it in 2014 and put the gas on, leaving performance and video in the rear view mirror. Thought about it, but was entrenched in painting. Over the past year, I began to think more and more about my performative work and wanted to start exploring it again from this new vantage point. I did little things around the studio that never saw the light of day, but wasn&rsquo;t ready to do anything public.&nbsp; 
David comes from a background of painting and performance. He pushed me for a performative element in the show. Not pushing in a bad way, in a healthy way, like a coach tells you that you can do better with some minor adjustments in your thinking. I was in that mental state where I had so many built up ideas and plans for performances, but didn&rsquo;t execute, so it was a deluge of ideas to sift through. I kept tweaking to get to the performance I executed - sitting in front of a grid of industrial fans making 1000 drawings over however much time it was to take. 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;What pushed you to enter a new phase with your work? 
MH:&nbsp;Being exhausted with self and all the ideas that I thought I had about making art. This is the beginning of a new path, a continuation of the old, as we can&rsquo;t dismiss our past, but it is definitely more scenic and delightful. Excited to see where it leads.&nbsp;

Installation view of The Aesthetics of Stability by Marc Horowitz

L&#39;O:&nbsp;You are presenting renditions of Dutch old master&#39;s still life paintings with diagrams and beautiful handwritten text over the works. What is the representation? 
MH:&nbsp;I&rsquo;ve always thought of my paintings as diagrams for living. My last show was actually titled just that, &ldquo;diagrams for living.&rdquo; I had made all these collages for that show that contained diagrams and text that came from my notebooks and sketches. I have an intense journaling/ drawing/ note taking practice.&nbsp; 
Writing had always stayed on paper for me. I wanted to explore the idea of formalizing it more in the paintings. I did some studies with painting and writing and I realized quickly that it either had to not happen or be pushed much further. I did the latter and ended up with these works.&nbsp; 
Each painting is an appropriated old master painting from either Weenix or Van Aelst that I first recreated in oil and then wrote over with silver paint. Each painting has its own theme/ proposition that falls under the umbrella of the aesthetics of stability.&nbsp; 
The appropriated works serve many roles for me. They are in line with this idea of acceleration, everything pushing into the present. They play the role of the straight man where the text becomes the comedic counterman &ndash; interfering, complicating and riffing. These historical works that were once a marvel are now just backdrops, just something to be seen online or briefly at a museum or, as many of these particular paintings have experienced, hawked at auction. These old master paintings become a place, a commonplace, not unlike the places I chose for public performances, on which to collaborate and deviate.&nbsp; 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;What does painting mean to you as an expression? 
MH:&nbsp;For me painting is a heavy and infinite form of expression. I started in painting and wanted to bring it back in the fold. I quit for so many years cause it was such a head fuck and I was over the studio as a place to make art. I saw so many possibilities elsewhere. But now, after so many years, I can use painting to augment the ideas in my performance and conceptual work.&nbsp; 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;Part of the exhibition is a decaying sculpture. This sculpture was part of an unfortunate fire in Malibu, and gives a nod to the duality of fate, a demonstration of its short display and destiny. What is your stand on destiny and fate?&nbsp; 
MH:&nbsp;One of the paintings deals with the implications of a single decision and its rippling consequences. It is bizarre to think that there are billions of humans out there making decisions simultaneously every moment of every day. These decisions are interwoven and their outcomes shared.&nbsp; 
Nothing is really up to me, almost everything is out of my control, I just attempt to do the next right action and have faith. Live in the present and there is no past or future, things just unfold as they are supposed to. 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;You keep a journal. Is writing important in your workflow? 
MH:&nbsp;Very. I keep many journals.&nbsp; 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;You are married to artist Petra Cortright and you have a son Otto.&nbsp; 
How is sharing your personal life with a fellow artist and how do you balance work and personal life? 
MH:&nbsp;It&rsquo;s just like any other relationship, some days are better than others. We have our separate workflows and studios and it works well that way. We respect each other&#39;s work and have admiration for one another, but we don&rsquo;t make it the crux of our relationship. Petra is the only artist I could be married to. &nbsp; 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;Has fatherhood changed anything in your work? 
MH:&nbsp;It has. I am no longer an I, I am a we. It is a huge blessing not to be a self-obsessing neutered worker bee artist anymore. I&rsquo;m not pointing fingers here, there are plenty of artists who don&rsquo;t self-aggrandize and don&rsquo;t have children, all good. &nbsp;For me, it is so nice to see the world through my son&#39;s eyes and to be more selfless than selfish.&nbsp; 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;You were one of the first artists to use the internet and social media in your work, using live streaming from your studio or chronicling your exploits on YouTube.&nbsp;What is your take on social media today? 
MH:&nbsp;I use it cause it is how we share and communicate at this point. Something will supplant this round of social media and I can only hope it is more advanced and better for the human spirit. &nbsp;But in the meantime I have to accept that social media has a pervasive desire to commodify my leisure time and has become a place mostly for commerce and entertainment. SM constantly seeks to track my movements and place me in echo chambers where like likes like :( 
 
L&#39;O:&nbsp;You take inspiration from art history and masters like Jan Weenix and Willem van Aelst, but which living artist do you most admire? 
MH:&nbsp;Can I say Joseph Beuys?&nbsp;

L&#39;O:&nbsp;Who are your daily heroes? 
MH:&nbsp;My wife and my son.

L&#39;O:&nbsp;What is your biggest dream for the future? 
MH:&nbsp;To continue the path that I am on.&nbsp;

L&#39;O:&nbsp;What are your upcoming projects? 
MH:&nbsp;I have a couple hundred page monograph coming out in the fall that I will do a book tour for, a wild performance coming up in Oklahoma City, and am looking forward to getting back in the studio to paint.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

-------------------------- 
 
Marc Horowitz &quot;The Aesthetics of Stability&quot; 
de boer gallery | 3311 E. Pico Blvd. 
deboergallery.com 
Jusqu&#39;au 28 mai, 2022

The Aesthetics of Stability

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