Channa Horwitz

Channa Horwitz (née Channa Helene Shapiro, May 21, 1932 – April 29, 2013) was a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles, United States.^[1] She is recognized for the logically-derived compositions created over her five decade career. Her visually complex, systematic works are generally structured around linear progressions using the number eight.^[2][3][4]

Early life and education

Horwitz was born in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, on May 21, 1932; her father was an electrician and inventor. As a married mother of three, she took art classes at several schools in the Los Angeles area before earning a B.F.A. in 1972 from CalArts. She married her second husband, Jim Horwitz, in 1973.^[1]

The Art and Technology exhibition and Sonakinatography

In 1968, Horwitz (then Channa Davis) submitted a proposal to the seminal Art and Technology Program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The proposed sculpture consisted of eight beams moving vertically out of sculptural bases over ten minutes of time, corresponding to a choreography of colored lights. Although the sculpture was never fabricated, Horwitz's proposal was included in the 1970 program catalogue, whose cover prominently displayed the faces of the white male artists whose works appeared in the culminating exhibition at the Museum. Art and Technology's glaring omission of women—specifically the fact that Horwitz was never asked to speak with industry about the possibility of making her sculpture—led to a public outcry in the feminist art community in Los Angeles, involving confrontations and eventual concessions from the curator Maurice Tuchman.^[5][6]

Not long after submitting the Art and Technology proposal, Horwitz continued her interest in representing motion across time. She asked her then-husband for a break from a tennis match to spend two hours drawing, and during this period invented a system of composition called Sonakinatography, meaning sound - motion - notation.^[4] Sonakinatography plots the activity of eight entities over a period of time using numbers, colors, and the eight-to-the-inch squares of the graph paper they appear on. While visually appealing in their own right as standalone drawings, Sonakinatography compositions have also been performed via percussion, dance, spoken word, and electronic instruments.^[4]

Because of the initial choice of eight-to-the-inch graph paper for Sonakinatography, Horwitz has used the number eight consistently through her work, as she expands and varies her original systems into new sequences.^[7]

Current representation

Although for the most part publicly ignored throughout her career, Horwitz's work has been gaining recognition in recent years. She is currently represented by François Ghebaly Gallery. Horwitz has commented that this lack of public involvement has likely given her the freedom to pursue and question the directions in which the structures of her work take her.^[7] She has recently exhibited at Francois Ghebaly Gallery (Los Angeles), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the New Museum (New York), ZKM Karlsruhe and Kunsthalle Dresden (Germany), and Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Spain), the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), and the Whitney Biennial 2014. She has upcoming events across the US and Europe. She received the honor of a Guggenheim Fellowship shortly before her death in April, 2013.^[8]

Selected Solo Exhibitions

• 2013: "Orange Grid", François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
• 2011: „Displacement“, curated by Marc Glöde, Y8, Hamburg
• 2011: „What Would Happen If I“, Aanant & Zoo, Berlin
• 2010: „Hello is not like I would say goodbye“ Aanant & Zoo, Berlin
• 2010: „Sequences and Systems“, SolwayJones, Los Angeles
• 2009: „Variations in Counting One Through Eight“, Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam e.V, Potsdam
• 2009: „Searching/Structures 1960-2007“, Aanant & Zoo, Berlin
• 2007: „Variances“, SolwayJones, Los Angeles
• 2007: „Channa Horwitz: Variations in Counting One“, Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, Potsdam (Catalog)
• 1988: „Paintings and Drawings“, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG), Los Angeles^[9]

Selected Group-Exhibitions

• 2014: "Whitney Biennial, 2014", NYC, New York
• 2013: "55th Venice Biennale", Venice, Italy
• 2012: „Ghosts in the Machine“, New Museum, New York
• 2012: „Made in L.A“, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
• 2012: „Papier / Papier II“, Kunstgaleriebonn, Bonn
• 2012: „Systems and Structures“, Galerie Casas Riegner, Bogota
• 2012: „How To Make - Ideen, Notationen, Materialisierungen“, Kunsthaus Dresden, Dresden
• 2012: „Moments, Eine Geschichte der Performance in 10 Akten“, ZKM Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe
• 2012: „Hanne Darboven und Channa Horwitz“, Galerie Crone, Berlin
• 2008: „Zero“, Aanant & Zoo, Berlin

References