Working in video, sculpture, sound installation, and photography, New York-based artist Jonathan Horowitz critically examines the cultures of politics, celebrity, cinema, war, and consumerism in his first solo exhibition at a New York museum. The exhibition will include works ranging from the early 1990s to the present. From found footage, Horowitz visually and spatially juxtaposes elements from film, television, and the media to reveal connections and breakdowns between these overlapping modes of communication.

In many works, these concerns are couched in the language of technology. In his video projection Maxell (1990), the image of the well-known videocassette brand logo plays from a tape copied many times over; the word deteriorates into a blur of static as it loses information. Horowitz also notes the value systems inherent in media by establishing a sculptural presence for some of his video works, where VHS tapes and television monitors are positioned on metal stands.

Other work addresses the inverted politics of celebrity activism, whereby celebrities align themselves with particular issues in order to construct and reclaim their identities. Horowitz repositions news publications like Life and Time, evocative of wholesome American ideals, to draw subversive connections. Media generated imagery of Pop icons Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, and Helen Keller, not unlike those used by Warhol, are combined with quotations expressing political conviction, resulting in a new form of humanist Pop portraiture. These portraits chip away at the veneer of perfection to complicate the Pollyanna facades of celebrity figures.