On August 14, 2024, NOW Art Founder Carmen Zella sat down with artist Marc Horowitz for a live conversation about public art and LUMINEX 3.0 on Instagram (@nowart_la). RSVP here for future LUMINEX Artist Talks.
Below is a transcript of the video:
Carmen Zella (CZ): Hi, this is Carmen Zella. I’m here at the studio of Marc Horowitz, who is – yes, he’s here with all of the dogs. He is our incredible Luminex artist who is going to be featured at site one with a performance piece. We’ll have a conversation about that, but first I just wanted to share where I’m at right now because it’s a real beautiful visual spectacle – this is where the magic happens.
So for all of the artists who are watching this Instagram Live this is a definitely super fun, playful creative, inspiring space. And then boom – the creative mind at work. So we’re gonna have a nice little conversation. Thank you everybody for joining. Just sit back, relax.
We do these IG chats with artists to be able to just dive into conversations and get some similar minds in sync.
Marc Horowitz (MH): Yes. I’m trying to share the link. I’m sharing the link. Okay, good.
CZ: Okay, good! So Marc, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about public art, just to bridge the conversation. So can you talk about your thoughts on public art and it could relate to work that you’ve done or artists that you admire or what are your just sort of general thoughts about public art? What is it about public art that you find interesting?
MH: It’s a broad topic.
CZ: Yeah, but it’s a topic that is different – it’s not like studio art or something that you create and then you sell and then might never ever be visible in the public.
MH: No, no I get it. Public art – So I got into it with…I guess I can talk about myself.
CZ: Yeah, that’s why we’re here!
MH: Yeah. So I went to school for business, microeconomics, and marketing. And then got a job in Silicon Valley. It was not for me. Went to the San Francisco Art Institute and studied under these two guys, Harrell Fletcher, Jon Rubin.
Do you know them?
CZ: Yeah.
MH: And so they were like early social practice artists and I had no idea when I was with them or studying under them. I was like, wait, what? What are you doing? And so they would have like garage sales at a gallery that would be like an empty storefront that they would commandeer from the landlord for a month or something.
And then they would sell everything at face value. And they had tags of the stories of the items that people were getting rid of. It was very communal, and almost sweet. But I was in painting at school. And I was just like, I had too much energy to be like a hermetic painter.
Also just being in a studio all day at that time in my life, I was like, this is not for me. So then I started, I took up their torch and started running with it. And I think the first couple of projects that I did were insane.
CZ: What were those projects?
MH: I had a pack mule in San Francisco that I ran my errands on. I just went to Trader Joe’s, and to like the bank, and REI, it was pet friendly, and I brought him in the store, and it caused quite a commotion. And then, another project that I did was stringing together 1500 feet of extension cord from my kitchen to the Alamo Square Park, where the Painted Ladies are and hooked up a coffee maker and served free coffee every Saturday for a year and so that was very community based.
These were still rooted in community and they were rooted really in the Bay Area, like Bay Area politics, Bay Area performance, like Diggers. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Diggers. It was like a 60s group in San Francisco where they gave away free food, and very very hippie. But there was a lot of holdout of that kind of work in San Francisco. There was a critic up there called Ted Purves and he wrote a book called…what is it? I think it’s “The Free Economy” [What We Want Is Free].
CZ: Yeah.
MH: Right and so it had all those vibes of the Bay Area. It was very specific to then and that time, and the falling off of the…
CZ: And what years are you talking about?
MH: That was like 2002 to 2004.
CZ: Okay.
MH: And then the biggest sort of public thing that I did at that time was happenstance. But it was…I was working for a photo assistant. And so Crate and Barrel had a photo shoot. I was working in Chicago. And they’d given me a huge per diem every night for dinner.
And if I didn’t spend it, I didn’t get to keep it. And so I was like, well that’s f’ed up. I basically put a thing out on Craigslist and said, Whoever wants to meet me for dinner, I’ll meet you for dinner, and I’ll pay for it. And so I got 900 people that wanted to have dinner in one day.
And then the news station called me, and it was on the morning news before work. WGN-TV with Larry Potash, I’ll never forget it. And it was so weird. And I came into work and they’re like, Oh, Mr. Performance artist or whatever. And they were like here’s a dry erase board. What do you want to write on it?
And I was like, what if I put my cell phone number and said dinner with Marc? That’d be a funny extension of this project. And they said, that’s fine, go ahead and go for it. And I thought for sure it’d get blotted out, but they printed it. And then I got a call from this guy, Jake in Oberlin Park, Kansas, about eight months later.
And I was in cool California at the time. I bought this like heavy wool suit that I was wearing. I was out of my mind and I was like, who is this? And he’s like, I saw your number in Crate and Barrel. And I was like, Oh my Lord in heaven. And so then like it just, the calls kept coming in. And then the Today Show sent a representative to my house, how they got my address I have no idea. And then from there it was just like, they kept publishing the number.
And then I quit my job and I took an RV and went around the country for a year having dinner with these people that called. It was bizarre. It was so bizarre.
CZ: So out of that experience, what was like…that’s an amazing experience.
MH: It was pretty amazing.
CZ: For a year!
MH: For a year.
CZ: Who did you…Were they just all…Was there a threat?
MH: No, all over the place.
CZ: Really? So there was no kind of…
MH: People in the South would be like I want you to come here and experience of racism. And then people invited me to their gay weddings in like, Hawaii. Then somebody wanted me to officiate a wedding for their daughter. And then people started calling me from all over the world And I was like, I can’t, this is like all of my credit card, man.
CZ: Wow.
MH: I’d roll up and I’d stay in my RV or their house and we would cook dinner. We wouldn’t go out.
CZ: And just have epic conversations and connections with people.
MH: The first one was Larry Harvey.
CZ: Wow!
MH: I know!
CZ: That’s like, coming out of the boot, with Larry Harvey!
MH: I was so nervous. And for you that are watching, Larry Harvey is the inventor, creator of Burning Man.
CZ: Yeah! He must have absolutely loved it. Tell me that you guys cooked dinner together.
MH: I cooked in the RV with onions that I didn’t know. And it just stank to high heaven. And he was such a smoker. He probably couldn’t even smell it.
He had an Altoids tin. And he would just chain smoke and put them out in his Altoids tin and then take it with him. And it was just like, I was so nervous and we recorded it like a video and it was a little awkward. I didn’t know, it was like the first one. It was like you’re a total stranger and a god, but it was fun.
It was really wild. I got pitched all kinds of ideas for Hollywood shows and blah blah blah blah.
CZ: Wow. So then how did you end up manifesting that later? Is that something that you’ve just been, like from that particular experience – how did that sort of inform, like even your paintings?
MH: Oh right, iinteresting. Out of that, I was like, I want to explore this further. I want to see – I was getting further away from like me documenting and I wanted to see, okay, what about giving up total control and having…it was me and then it was sort of news stations or like the media.
It was like a media prank. And then I was like what if I just got in the belly of the beast and I got represented by William Morris, as their first digital client, as their first like YouTube client. And it was a nightmare. I mean it was kind of a nightmare. At first it wasn’t, there was like, Sony had a bunch of money.
I got thrown all this money. I drove my Signature across the US, like I did crazy things, but it was just too much, giving up too much control. And it was really like, it was a little uneasy and at the end, I was like on some weird TV show and I was like, okay, this is…And then I met Petra and I was like going to some commercial auditions and she’s like, dude, are you happy?
And I was like, no. And she’s like, stop. And so then that’s when I stopped doing that. But that, but it really, it stopped when I went to grad school at USC. I like fired them. Well, It was mutual, but whatever – we parted ways. And I went to the intellectual sweat lodge that was USC for two years. And it changed me. I don’t know.
CZ: What program were you in at USC?
MH: The fine arts program, the Roski or whatever, with Charlie White and Jud Fine and Frances Stark and the whole crew. But it was great, it was cool, it was paid for, it was amazing and I rode the train and my bike to school. But that sort of got me into like more of an insular performer like wearing costumes and stuff. And so I wanted to step it back and that’s what ended up happening with painting.
It was just like, okay, now i’m back in the studio. I don’t know if it’s an age mature thing. I’m not really sure. But whatever.
CZ: So when you’re expressing yourself on canvas, is it performative?
MH: Yeah, I think so. You could argue that all painting is performative. So it’s specious in some way but I feel like it is.
There’s gotta be an energy there. I’m not like a grid painter or something, you know, like a de Kooning or Joan Mitchell or something. They were very expressive.
CZ: Do you feel like each one of the paintings kind of embodies a different character or moment or?
MH: It’s funny you say that. Yeah, yes. I think the biggest problem I had with painting is I approach it like performances, like projects. And so each body or each one sometimes is its own thing. And that doesn’t necessarily roll well in painting. Do you know? Because people want to see – if you’re talking about like the commercial market, for example.
CZ: They want to see balance.
MH: They want to see balance, they want to see unity. It’s not like I don’t have that, I do have that. I have style, I have my own thing. But like I do approach each canvas as if it’s like a stage, whether it be a public stage or on stage, like in a black box theater, and then it’s just like riffing.
CZ: Right, and sometimes there is not a harmony or sometimes they don’t land and like that perfect…
MH: And then that sequence or whatever. So that’s been a massive challenge coming back to painting, it’s like this lack of…
CZ: Do you feel like you need to play into like it’s the same thing as the market?
MH: It’s a constant struggle for me. It’s also the Gen X roots. It’s also this hard like, “oh the man” – I cannot get rid of it. It’s so ingrained in me. Oh, nice breath.
CZ: It’s a bit much Rue!
MH: So yeah, I don’t know it’s challenging, it’s challenging.
CZ: So then tell me, because this is in my brain at least, it’s like segwaying into what you’re creating for Luminex in many ways, because it’s like creating like this foundation of understanding of that moment that you’re building and maybe deeper meaning of you yourself and association with that work. So can you talk a little bit about the installation that and the performance piece that you’re doing for the Luminex? As Rue freaks out on the couch!
MH: Francis is like shedding all over me. She’s like stress shedding. Hi girls!
Yes. I think, coming back to – sorry – in grad school, I did this piece with my friend Chris Coy and we dressed up as dust bunnies. And it was like – honestly, that’s like the best thing I’ve ever done.
CZ: It’s so good. It’s epic.
MH: It’s so good. It was a 16-minute, one take, that was it. I was like, I don’t know, just do dust things. I have no idea. And we set up those folding tables that are fake wood to look like a baseboard. And then I swung this tire on the wall to look like shoe scuff marks.
And then we just sat there and did these dust things, and I was like, Oh, okay. So it was like a buddy comedy, which is cool. And then I just did all these like duo performances. There was another one where we chopped a block in a gallery.
CZ: With Chris still?
MH: No, well it was another Chris. His name was Chris Duce. And it was just this like purgatorial space chopping away at this gigantic monolith of a plaster sculpture. And we were just with axes and I actually hit my foot. I thought I like totally killed myself. Did not.
But then I was like, okay, this performance thing- it’s also, that was quite expensive, performing this thing. I don’t know. It can get wildly expensive as well.
That’s why I thought like having a Hollywood budget would be like super fun. Just to be like, I’m going to blast this out. I’m just going to present all these ideas that I normally want to do, and see if they’ll bite. And they did, and it was fun, but again, it was control issues.
So I think, for this performance for Luminex is…I did this, I’ve always been obsessed with gigantic fans. I did this performance at a show two years ago at DeBoer Gallery, where I was tasked myself – it was like endurance – to do a thousand drawings in front of these four fans that were bolted together, Home Depot fans. And it was, I got so sick, first of all. I’m gonna wear a mask this time, that’s the lesson learned.
But it was horrendous. You’re just like, all you can hear is fans, and you can’t even think straight, and you’re just trying to get this thing done. And it forced me to look more into what it was about. And then I started reading, or I have been reading, like Byung-Chul Han, who’s a philosopher.
He wrote a bunch of books. The first one I read was The Scent of Time, which time was measured by incense in I think Buddhist culture. And so we’re losing that. We’re losing the sense of time, and the scent of time. But we’re losing – everything’s becoming compressed, and there’s no hierarchy.
And so I got really interested in this idea of like burnout society and just hyperdrive, hustle culture. These things that are like, that I’m actively seeing – this is another sort of reason I got out of YouTube stuff and refuse to do TikTok, because I feel like it’s just a dangerous treadmill.
Nothing against people to do it. Honestly, that’s great. But I just don’t see a, I just don’t see it. I don’t see it as something that I want to engage in. It feels very hamster wheel to me. But it’s also that sort of narcissism and people’s desire to be seen and heard.
But I get it, there’s so many things that are designed to isolate now, so anyhow, so all this sort of stuff has really informed this piece that I’m going to do at Luminex, which is: I’m going to have a friend now. I was going to do it alone, but I’m going to have a friend because I like the buddy comedy thing, and we’re going to sit in a room, like a 10 by 12 room, and there’s going to be a gigantic fan on one side, and there will be a timer, and we’ll have four minutes – three or four minutes, I think four minutes – to make these little sculptures with all these little tchotchkes that I have. And these tchotchkes come from my mom who is like a hoarder and she would always bring me stuff and I would be like, I feel so guilty to throw it out, so I just have boxes of her stuff.
CZ: Oh wow.
MH: And so I still have some. And so I’m going to use those things.
CZ: And what’s an example of one of those objects?
MH: Oh my god. There’s like – it’s like such Midwest chintz. Like a ceramic, like tall house with a little bush out front that says “welcome.” It’s like this big. And that doesn’t even make any sense. Nothing about that makes sense. And then it’s like a pen holder that’s a snail. But it doesn’t hold pens well, so it like slips off the back. So it’s just like all stuff…
CZ: Like kitsch things that she just needed to buy, because it was like cheap at the dollar store and what a deal.
MH: And what a deal. And that’s the mentality. That’s like the holdover from like the depression, which you know, she wasn’t in the depression but her mother was and so therefore like I feel like the depression is still in me, like I save every can and jar and stuff. I’m like, Oh yes, these are perfectly good and can be used.
And I’m constantly thinking, oh, maybe I should save this little piece of string. So it’s a slippery slope. But so we’re going to make these objects and I’m sure we’ll make a couple, but then I’m sure we’ll get stuck on something. And then if I don’t complete it, if we don’t complete it in four minutes, this fan comes on.
And ideally, it’ll just be obnoxious and disruptive. Oppressive. And, who knows if we’ll be able to even complete one after that. I have no idea. And we’re going to be using hot glue and just very crafty, Midwest things. Like pipes pipe cleaners and glue.
CZ: And then what are you going to do with the objects if you…
MH: If we complete them? Here’s the thing. I wanted to put them in a little box and then tape them up like a little package, either with a bow or like specialty tape or something and then hand it out like a little window and then they would get handed out to somebody who wants them. But my fear is that nobody’s gonna want this shit and just be like, I don’t know dude.
I don’t want that, you know. I guess it doesn’t matter but it’s just like, this idea of producing something and just again, it goes back to the San Francisco days of like free economy.
CZ: Yeah, but I love that circle for you because even if people don’t want it, there’s a conversation about that too.
MH: Yeah exactly.
CZ: I think that the gesture of ffering something that somebody else either sees is completely precious or not, and then the conversation about what is precious in the art world.
MH: That’s a great question.
CZ: And we’re all kind of creating stuff that we think is precious and there’s value that’s added to it, but at the end of the day, it’s…
MH: It’s worthless.
CZ: Yeah, it’s like we create that value based on our subscription to something. It’s not like it’s all made in gold or it’s made in…it’s a conversation, which I think is very interesting as like your creative…
MH: Value. Yeah, exactly. And then what were the things I wrote?
Hang on, I want to just, I did take two notes before this. I was like, I should make notes.
CZ: Really?
MH: Yeah, because I’m such a nerd. I’m so nerdy. Oh yeah, the tagline is “nothing is possible, nothing is impossible.” So there you go.
But that’s where I feel like we live – it’s like almost a shame that everyone’s told they can do something, everything, because then they can’t do anything in a way.
It’s like that thing. Joseph Bueys said everyone’s an artist – that also makes no one an artist, you know.
CZ: That’s right. But then it’s like life is art, art is life.
MH: Yeah, then art is not, or life is not art and, whatever. It just cancels it. So I guess it’s just also exploring that in a way, that conundrum.
And then the idea of – I think the last five or six years, maybe it was seven years, I’ve gotten into like acceleration theory, like starting with Paul Virilio and his book, The Great Accelerator, and then looking at darker stuff like Nick Land, where he is like a true accelerationist, saying that we should shed our skin and become machines.
And that’s when humanity will shine. The dark enlightenment, essentially.
CZ: The dark enlightenment. This is very fascinating. So an accelerationist is exactly what? I haven’t heard that terminology.
MH: There’s good accelerationists and there’s bad accelerationists. So “bad” would be somebody like Nick Land saying accelerate capitalism to its maximum, so just, fly wheels off, and then, machines basically take over. And that’s where we need to go. And then the good accelerationists are working against that. And saying, it’s almost like a slowing down of capitalism. Nick Srnicek I think is one of those guys.
But whatever, it’s just interesting because we are an acceleration.
CZ: We are.
MH: Or at least it feels like that. I know like time is a construct, but it does feel like, if you look at things in the last 20 years, it’s just it feels like a hockey stick.
CZ: It totally does.
MH: Like when I was a kid, you had four or five channels, you had this and that.
CZ: If someone didn’t call you, you know.
MH: That was it, man. If you weren’t at the place you said you were gonna meet, that’s it.
CZ: Yeah, exactly.
MH: And so it’s almost, it’s just overdrive. It’s almost too much.And then you end up almost doom scrolling in life, and then you give yourself no pause or break or boredom. And that’s so dangerous. Like I think everyone should experience and become friends with boredom and pain, and they don’t. Everyone wants to avoid pain, which is not good, and this constant, this phone is like, woo!
It’s just constant entertainment. And I know I sound like such – luddite’s not even the right word, but I sound like such an old guy, but I really firmly believe though that like those two things, like either do it through meditation or do it through like, staring at a tree for 20 minutes. I don’t know.
CZ: I think we all desire the same thing and we’re all just like getting into fried burnout zone.
MH: Yeah. What was that banker? I don’t know if i’m reading this right – didn’t a banker at B of A or something die because he was like working too much he was working like a hundred hours a week or something.
Now they’re running, they’re like, “Oh, we need to look at this.” It was like a trader, and trading has gotten so insane. It was 24 hour markets and like, I don’t know. I just think it feels heavy. Things feel heavy, and that to me feels like that sort of like pushing the accelerator.
CZ: So do you think the project, like in terms of the audienceship at Luminex, are gonna connect?
MH: I don’t know. I really don’t know. They’ll be like, “Oh, look at that funny guy in the fan room!” Who knows, man? Like half the stuff I do, people are like, “Oh, dude’s got a mule. That’s weird.” So I don’t know. It is that sort of balance too, between staying…I don’t know, making something accessible. And this is also a major conflict in painting, painting being the art that it is, it’s just a lot of it’s really inaccessible. Both monetarily and in terms of the trajectory of the artist and having to know certain things about something.
It’s really off putting to many many people. That’s why I kind of do like the Broad, I know a lot of people push against it, because it’s got like the greatest hits. But you go in there and people love it.
CZ: They totally do.
MH: They’re like really enjoy themselves. And you’re like, you know what? Great.
CZ: Yeah.
MH: Great.
CZ: Yeah. Exactly.
MH: Like great! We don’t have to show a room of Agnes Martins. No one’s gonna understand that. Not to be like sorry, not to be whatever. I don’t know if that statement’s gonna offend anybody – it’s a balance of making stuff accessible and then also having it have an edge,
CZ: Well sometimes when you throw, an Agnes Martin or any artists that are more conceptually based and you put their work in front of somebody who hasn’t studied fine art or they don’t have, necessarily, the history or the knowledge to be able to, get the same, response from it – The responses are so authentic and there’s something so beautiful about being able to get that level of authenticity as an artist or producer or creative from the general public, from all different demographics of life. And so I’m super excited to see your piece because I think it’s brilliant, but also to be able to see the response from the public about the piece, I think it’s going to be…that duality of being able to be there is something not to be missed.
So I’m really excited. We’re going to wrap. Thank you so much, everybody. If you have any questions that you want answered – I’m kind of lousy at checking the chat room while I’m doing these live IG chats.
MH: It’s impossible. It’s over there!
CZ: So if you guys have any questions or responses or whatever, please put them in the chat.
We will circle back. We’ll make sure that we give those questions to Marc, but otherwise we’re really excited. Please share about Luminex. We’re hoping that all of you can be there.
And yeah, this was really great. Thank you for inviting me to your studio. I know we’re getting like floating dog hair as we’re talking!
MH: Look at this. This is so crazy.
CZ: Amazing. All right, everybody. Have a great night. Thank you, Mark.
MH: Thank you. Thanks for tuning in.
CZ: Thanks for tuning in. Bye.