Channa Horwitz

Biography
View works. Channa Horwitz, Rhythm of Lines 3-7, 1987
Rhythm of Lines 3-7, 1987
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Channa Horwitz (1932-2013) was born in Los Angeles, where she lived and worked. Known for her tightly controlled approach to geometric abstraction, Horwitz devised a conceptual system for drawing called Sonakinatography in which abstract elements (initially sound, motion, and position) are tracked through stepwise transformations and represented graphically on eight-to-the-inch square grids. In each, the numbers one through eight are represented graphically by color or symbol and plotted according to an initiating set of rules that ultimately created her compositions. Sequencing, seriality, and iteration are all key dynamics in her work.

Over time, new series spawned from existing ones like the branching of an evolutionary tree. With each alteration of the starting variables in the system, a new body of work arose. Horwitz built her visual systems with an exacting rigor, yet was consistently guided by an openness to new possibilities embedded within her existing architectures.

In the final years of her life, her extensive practice gained long overdue recognition for its contributions to the development of conceptual art and process-based abstraction. She showed at the 55th Venice Biennale, the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. Biennial, and the New Museum, and she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Grant in 2013. In the years that followed, her works were included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial as well as in major group exhibitions at LACMA, MOCA Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Horwitz’s work is now held in numerous public collections across the U.S. and internationally.

More recently, Horwitz’s work was presented in solo exhibitions at the He Museum, Foshan, China; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain; and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada. Recent prominent group exhibitions include LACMA, the 2023 Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Staatlich Museum, Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Morgan Library, Fundació Joan Miró and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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Installation view, Channa Horwitz, Rhythm Intertwined, 2023
He Art Museum, Foshan, China
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