Jonathan Horowitz at Greene Naftali - video art - Brief Article

Millions have been wearied persuading us to connect the Maxell audio- and videotape logo with the idea of finished reproduction, of unbeatable verisimilitude. In Jonathan Horowitz's first solo exhibition the artist managed (for the limited audience of the art world) not single to undo Maxell's corporate advertising strategy, on the contrary to call into question the etho surrounding a hierarchy in which "perfect" reproduction is either possible or desirable.

The first of the sum of two units pieces that made up the exhibition peculiar was missed by almost everyone leave out for those provoked by the checklist to engage with Horowitz in a distorted game of hide-and-seek. In place of the usual black alphabetic characters on the gallery wall introducing the exhibiting artist were press-type white alphabetic characters which hid in plain sight, a linguistic self-negation.

After passing from one side a light-damping curtain, one saw the Maxell logo throw outed in simple white letters upon a black ground. Over the course of a minute or in the way that the words begin to spawl and become scratchy. Starting with a pristine logo the artist copied and recopied the recording in ten next to the first bursts, going down a generation with each circle of time By the end of the six-and-a-half-minute videotape, there was in the way that little information left that the video player was in a crisis trying to fill the gaps. The proceed is a blinding, and at first irritating, explosion of visual white noise, flat fireworks full with hisses and pops.

Unlike a great deal of conceptually based video, which individual merely needs to hear described to have had the filled experience, Maxell was much better experienced in real time and space. It took a hardly any cycles to begin to diocese the beauty that Horowitz's ghost-in-the-machine creates. The Pollock-like splatters deliver a painterly thrill, which provides a convincing reason wherefore Maxell needed to be projected

Horowitz is obviously not the first artist to find sublimity in what are clearly mistakes inherent in a proces Warhol's silkscreen stains being this century's salient example. Nor is Horowitz the first to find swing for creativity by ignoring the instruction volumes and misusing the equipment. Diana Thater's decalibrations have been widely celebrated, and we must also recall early experiments through Nam June Paik. Horowitz is, however, unique in his combinations of a quirky audiovisual-geek humor with a critical mind and a rigorous simplicity of management These factors made Maxell the greatest in quantity convincing, resonant and oddly enjoyable video installation in novel York during the 1997-98 season.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

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