The Center for Improved Living (in Geneva)
The above is a video tour of the show. If you’d like to see photos as well, please visit http://bit.ly/TCFIL_Analix
Marc Horowitz: The Center for Improved Living
by Marisa Olson
What do artists do, if not show us new ways to see the world around us? Few artists manage to invent anything new, but most good artists succeed in fabricating new contexts for the perception of the reality that already exists.
Marc Horowitz’s work does this–on an absurd level. When I first met Marc, four years ago, he confessed to me that he wasn’t sure whether he was an artist or a comedian. In the years since then, he’s found success in both vocations, largely because what he does straddles this line. Of course he’s an artist! Of course he’s a comedian!
Sometimes it takes fiction or parody to help us realize the truth. The world that is created in Marc Horowitz’s installations, drawings, photos, and performances is, to borrow a now-tired postmodern aphorism, “more real than real.” He lifts from everyday life the most mundane behaviors–the banalities that make us human, such as running errands, using the toilet, attempting to communicate with strangers, or feeding ourselves–and elevates them to the status of a grand event. The things he creates are augmentations for the enhanced experience and observation of these moments. In a sense, he is improving our lives.
Marc has always been full of ideas. He keeps lists and lists of potential inventions, neologisms, money-making schemes, and off-the-wall questions about the universe. The inventions that get made, and the ideas that manage to move from page to gallery, reflect the most persistent questions. They resonate with viewers for the same reason that they nag at the artist’s mind. They are compelling.
What would it mean to go outside of your “comfort zone”? How can we make generic architectural environments more pleasant, fun, and comforting? Who is responsible for the random products and advertising slogans that permeate our lives, and how can we improve upon their good ideas? What is the value of happiness and how can we get more for our money?
Of course, Marc’s work can be interpreted from a variety of fancy art historical perspectives. It’s situationist, it’s pop art appropriation, it’s readymade, it’s fluxus, it’s experimental cinema, it’s photorealism, it’s new media, it’s traditional media, it’s often body art and it may even be earth art, at times. And, of course, it speaks to “the moment.” It reflects American idealism, expansionism, and capitalism. It thrives on both DIY culture and slacker culture. It parodies pop culture so successfully that it becomes re-appropriated by it.
But none of these tangential readings are the primary motivation, here. The Center for Improved Living is really less about Marc and more about you. He wants to talk to you. He really does. He believes he can help you and he knows you can help him. Your collaborative practice of the “art of conversation” is what it’s all about. The rest is just mise-en-scene. The props, objects, and ideas swirling about you are there to facilitate an exchange that is all about exchange–a mutually beneficial moment of laughter, provocation, problem-solving, and improved living.
There is an “organization” in the United States called The Hair Club for Men. It’s a business that sells products designed to minimize the appearance of hair loss. Of course, they too are selling improved living. The owner of the company has given Americans one of their favorite expressions, by going on TV to show his own before-and-after photos and telling viewers, “Remember, I’m not only the President, I’m also a client.” Marc Horowitz is the Center for Improved Living’s fearless leader and biggest client. His entire lifestyle is put on display there, and it is every bit as wild, inventive, and funny as it looks. And the artist would like nothing better than to help you see your reality in the same way. So go ahead, visit the Center, and improve your life.
Marisa Olson
Artist, Editor, and Curator
Rhizome.org at the
New Museum of Contemporary Art
