Jonathan Horowitz: Minimalist Works from the Holocaust Museum I arrive at Dundee Contemporary Arts with a strong mental picture of Jonathan Horowitz. This is the man who, at 44, has already been described as “New York's master at blending irony, politics, and humour”, and whose work can be bold and occasionally brutal. Au fait with the machinery of popular culture, the artist turns frequently to images of headline-grabbing celebrities such as Britney Spears. But Horowitz himself, it turns out, is far from the big, brassy character I have created in my mind. He is surprisingly quiet and measured, with a fixed look of mild worry on his face. Answers to my questions are mulled over with intense concentration, as befits a man with a degree in philosophy. Horowitz is here for his first exhibition in a public UK gallery, Minimalist Works From The Holocaust Museum. Opening at DCA this weekend, the exhibition will include a substantial new commission, along with a selection of art from Horowitz’s 20 year career so far. The new commission, strictly speaking, is neither Minimalist, nor from the Holocaust Museum. It was inspired by a visit Horowitz made to the museum in Washington DC, where he found himself alarmed by the impotence of the specially commissioned pieces of Minimalist art. “They’re very blank,” he explains to me, “and they’re intended to provide a meditative experience, which I suppose is something that art can do. I don’t think it really functions that way in that context; they’re basically just invisible to people. Most people just walk right by them and that’s it.” The museum contains work by four Minimalist artists, which have been reinvented, Horowitz-style, for DCA. On my visit, three students are putting the finishing touches to a mural inspired by Sol LeWitt’s Consequence. The original consists of five large, monochromatic squares in a row, carried out according to LeWitt’s precise instructions. “With Sol LeWitt’s earlier work,” Horowitz explains, “the idea was that the murals could be painted by anyone, and they would just start as a set of instructions, but later on in his career he trained a series of mural painters… so what you end up with now are these perfectly applied, decorative wall paintings.” The only instruction Horowitz has given the Dundee students is “to paint the wall beige using one inch brushes”, and I arrive in time to see them at their creative graffiti. “You’re a queen”, the wall says, and “I love/hate kitsch”. By the time I leave, the hundreds of words have been painted in, leaving a textured trace for visitors to decipher. Horowitz sees this as “a very positive, liberating artwork”, in contrast with its tightly controlled source. Down in the gallery’s workshop, I’m shown a hunk of metal which would strike instant dread in anyone. Waiting for a final bit of patination, it’s a copy of the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign from Auschwitz, a replica of which also hangs at the Holocaust Museum. When the original was stolen last December, Horowitz, recalls, “it raised so many questions about what does it mean to vandalise a symbol of evil, and what does it mean to restore a symbol of evil, and what does it mean to copy a symbol of evil?” Horowitz, gripped by those questions, has commissioned experts to make this new replica, cut into three pieces just as it was found by Polish police. The chilling memento will go onto the walls at DCA, a reminder of the Holocaust, of the recent Neo-Nazi activity which led to its theft, and – to use Norman Finkelstein’s provocative phrase – of the modern Holocaust industry. I ask Horowitz if the replica will ever be offered for sale through his gallery, and whether the same Neo-Nazi who ordered the theft of the original might buy his instead. “He could,” Horowitz admits. “It would be very different though. The money would go in part to pay for the production of the piece [instead of funding Neo-Nazi activity]. I think the piece does bring up a lot of those questions, and I’ve thought a lot about that.” As with many of the works in this show, Horowitz decided not to assume a clear position, but instead to provoke debate and watch the public reaction. He also wants to make connections. “Some people would say that when talking about the Holocaust you shouldn’t make other connections,” he says, “and I don’t really agree with that. I think that you should never stop making connections. The contribution cubes function that way, to make connections to other things going on right now.” The contribution cubes sum up very neatly Horowitz’s relationship with Minimalism. Taking a simple geometric form, they echo the austere discipline of that movement, but each is a donations box for a named charity (involved in Palestine, animal rights, and gay rights in Africa). In this way they are instantly connected to the world right now, and to persecuted groups with urgent needs. This is no empty formal exercise: Horowitz feels passionately about the charities he has chosen. The cubes are at the heart of what Horowitz is trying to achieve in Dundee. Gone are the celebrity shockers (with the exception of his recurring favourite, Mel Gibson, who makes an appearance in video). Out come the pared down works. This project, the artist says, “is about Minimalism and the relationship between art and socio-political reality.” Horowitz is hoping for a receptive audience, having formed an impression of the Scottish art scene from over the water. “I have sensed an interest in Modernism and more formal art,” he tells me. “Martin Boyce – who represented Scotland at the last Venice Biennale – his work seems somewhat characteristic of work that’s being made by Scottish artists.” The artist is right to recognise a strong strand in contemporary Scottish art which revisits the formal and social aspects of Modernism. What Horowitz brings to the mix is the language of the modern media, and a fierce but generous will to make the world a better place.
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