“At the core of Horowitz’s work are the concepts of love and death, images from television that stay with us and define us, these are moments of horror (war, scandal), discomfort (anxiety, fantasy, the sensation of celebrity and its idols) – and they are all perceived in reality and memory through the same pixilated filter” - Klaus Biesenbach.

 

And/Or was published on the occasion of Jonathan Horowitz show at P.S.1 Contemporary Art/ MoMA, New York, February – September 2009 and is the first thorough survey of Horowitz’s work.

 

Orienting himself firmly in the media-present, Horowitz replays the recent past in the incarnations of our times. This reprisal occurs particularly in video works such as “Maxwell”, in which the name of the now obsolete videotape company is worn down to a VHS blur, and “The Soul of Tammi Terrell”, in which 1960s footage of the eponymous pop star singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” is juxtaposed with Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon’s rendition of the song in the 1998 film Stepmom. Horowtiz himself makes no overt political critique, but always ensures that the work’s underlying edge is laid plainly before the viewer. Queer and ecological themes also abound, as does sly humour and a Warholian detachment.