Above is the video tour from the show. For more images, please visit http://bit.ly/morebetter

Marc Horowitz: More Better (Life Enhancements)
By Marisa Olson

California-based artist Marc Horowitz is always full of ideas. The artist’s studio is filled with lists of thoughts he wants to pursue and the line between the words and the work itself becomes blurred when we see a solitary scrap of paper with gold letters spelling out the phrase: “Encase Camaro in Lucite.”

Horowitz is just as much a conceptual artist as he is a performance artist. Every aspect of his interaction with the world is deliberately playful and, as is the benchmark of any performative work, calls attention to the relationship between artist and viewer. In fact, the interactions that take place in Horowitz’s work often approach the level of transactions. The artist truly went to business school and has been known to peddle many a dubious product (17-piece shaving kit, anyone?), though for everyone’s benefit these products are usually free. In fact, his first project in art school was to stand on a busy San Francisco street corner, handing out “free ideas.” It turned out to be quite difficult to give these away, and so the exercise immediately established both Horowitz’s use of text-based works and his snake-charming abilities.

In the United States there is a company called Ronco. The founder and spokesman for the company, Ron, is a slick, friendly, manic television host who clearly thrives off the attention of the studio audience as he turns random household inventions into best-sellers. In many ways, Horowitz resembles this man. His recent work manages to critique consumer society while flooding “the market” with inventions no one knew they needed until the artist made them materialize. Fancy a Fart in a Bag? This is niche-filling is exactly why his exhibit is called “More Better.” The objects and ideas included are intended as improvements upon their predecessors and improvements in the user’s life. It’s all very American!

But if Horowitz’s work comes off as particularly American because of its entrepreneurial nature, it also reflects a contemporary American spirit of paranoia. The American people are being spied upon by their own government, and at this very moment, members of that government are intensely debating the legality of that surveillance. Subway system announcements, newspaper and television ads, and even popular movies have created a sense of panic, in calling on Americans to be ready, at any time, for another terrorist attack, like that of 9/11.

Horowitz’s work amplifies this paranoia, and this call for readiness. His Emergency DIY Helicopter is not unlike the fantasy aircraft that children draw. It’s doubtful that it would fly, but it’s laden with enough safety augmentations to give its owner a sense of safety. Horowitz’s Medieval Security System illustrates the absurd heights to which some will go in investing in flimsy, ineffective comfort systems. And it’s fun! We can’t forget the element of play, here. The artist’s Suitcase Security System is a product which, when opened, inflates a giant bag big enough to force everyone out of the room in which it sits. “Someone may get trapped,” the artist says on his blog, “That is the excitement, being 1/10,000 over the threshold of safety with this project. So in a way it’s way better than any car chase movie you’ll see.”

These products parody the rhetoric of anxiety, in order to reveal its absurdities. See for instance, Horowitz’s Fight Noise With Noise Campaign. Rather than turn a blind-eye to the situation, he amplifies it, turning up the noise so that we can hear and see more clearly. To some, these things might seem like frivolous interjections during serious times. To others, they are comic relief.

But of course, the question arises as to Horowitz’s destination after employing his own inventions to successfully escape from the immediate reality. “More Better” answers this question with a second set of inventions—the kind of objects and enterprises that would populate a Horowitzian Candyland…

Of course, the entrance to this domain would be marked by a fake gold mine, to establish the illusion of wealth. The earth would be roamed by Roostapotatas, the half-rooster, half-potato hybrids that made Horowitz wealthy enough to afford “a remote-controlled bear skin rug.” After eating these, we can visit the Air Toilet, a device which allows the user to avoid ever having to make contact with the surface of the toilet. The schematics and prototypes for each of these devices will be on view at “More Better,” as will a free pile of googly eyes so that viewers can make their own humorous tactical augmentations, and Mystery Bags of Change—the subject of the viewer’s investment in chance.

This mystery, itself an American institution, nicely sums up Horowitz’s work. It’s certainly imbued with a sense of urgency and anxiety, but in reality these diaristic observations and diversions are fueled by a sense of wonder and enthusiasm for life. The artist is most certainly fueled by his relationship to what TV calls the “studio audience,” but he gives so much more than he takes in making seemingly simple interactions moments that are transaction-like: We gain from our exposure to these ideas and objects that allow us to question the things we value. And along the way, we laugh out loud.