Channa Horwitz, Euan Macdonald, Michael Müller, and Marcus Civin
François Ghebaly is pleased to announce a group exhibition of works by Euan Macdonald, Michael Müller, Channa Horwitz, and Marcus Civin. The exhibition will present new works that explore oniric dimensions of literature and language. The video, performance, and drawing in this exhibition references or recalls the sharp humor, and labyrinthine psychological investigations of the bohemian reality-twister, Franz Kafka, and exemplifies these four unique artist’s shared interest in tensions between rhythm and the unexpected.
Euan MacDonald’s deadpan comedic video reinvigorates Kafka’s unfinished story, “Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor.” From “Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor,” Kafka, 1915:
“He quickly unlocks the door and switches on the light. He is not prepared for what he sees. For this is magic – two small white celluloid balls with blue stripes jumping up and down side by side on the parquet; when one of them touches the floor the other is in the air, a game they continue ceaselessly to play.”
Through rigorous drawings, Michael Muller explores, among other conceptual and formal impulses, the curving passages and flights of Kafka’s (also unfinished) immigrant adventure: “Amerika: The Man Who Disappeared.” From “Amerika: The Man Who Disappeared,” Kafka, c. 1924:
“Not knowing what to do, not seeing anyone, and hearing only the scraping of thousands of human feet overhead and the last, faraway wheezings of the engine, which had already been turned off, he began without thinking to knock at the little door which he had come to in his wanderings. ‘It’s open!’”
Channa Horwitz draws an intricate and exacting universe of notations that moves between the logics of geometry and abstraction.
Marcus Civin marshals Fluxus impulses to perform relationships between the body and resourcefulness, balancing wobbly and well-handled props. For his performance installation, Civin will make himself into a human crank. As the crank, Civin will be like a hamster in a hamster wheel and like a passenger in an airport security scanner.
Euan Macdonald has widely shown internationally; he just opened a solo exhibition at Western Bridge, in Seattle titled “A Little Ramble”
www.westernbridge.org
Michael Müller had his first US solo exhibition at Chung King Project / François Ghebaly last year, and recently was included in exhibitions @ Max Hetzler and Suzanne Vielmetter in Berlin. He will be presenting a solo project at Art Cologne this coming April with Aanant & Zoo, Berlin, before his second exhibition in LA this coming fall.
Channa Horwitz has been showing internationally too for the past 30 years, with the participation in landmark exhibition Art & Technology, and more recently solo projects at Art Forum, Berlin, and Kunsthalle, Potsdamm. She will have a major solo retrospective at Kunsthalle, LA organized by Solway-Jones this coming March.
In 2009, Marcus Civin earned an MFA in Studio Art from University of California, Irvine, and in 1999 a BA in Theater from Brown University. Recent exhibitions include an exhibition at Michael Smoler’s High Energy Constructs in 2006, and performances at PERFORM! NOW! with Sandy de Lissovoy; American Rifle: Part I @ Sea & Space; the Ups & Down with Candice Lin. He will be presenting his new performance, American Rifle part II at LACE, February 20, 2010.
