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I Wish I Could Wear These Balenciaga Paintings

Well, I believe in the continuity of development, by Marc Horowitz. Photo: Jeff McLane/Courtesy of Johannes Vogt

The end of fashion month has me feeling some type of way. In every city all the cool editors and influencers layered and layered their most colorful clothes — the cherry on top being some sort of luxurious, bold-colored coat. Everyone looked so good that for a second I thought, Wow I need to drop coin on a new coat immediately. But it’s already March. Soon it will be spring, and I probably won’t buy one. Now it seems someone has acknowledged my longing: there’s a new exhibit on the Upper East Side full of paintings of Balanciaga coats, and I wish I could wear all of them.

The creative mind behind these paintings is the Ohio-born and Los Angeles–based mixed-media artist Marc Horowitz, who actually has no interest in fashion beyond its function. He often layers paint and stacks objects in his work, unrelated to fashion, but that all changed when he came across Demna Gvasalia’s Balenciaga ads in a recent issue of T Magazine. He tore out the photos of models wearing extremely layered outfits and decided to make paintings inspired by them.

Gallery owner Johannes Vogt, who is showing the paintings at the Johannes Vogt Gallery until March 31, explained the surprising allure of this show: “The funny thing about these paintings is that he is your non-fashionable Midwestern white dude who absolutely doesn’t follow fashion, but somehow found inspiration by the Balenciaga.”

“I look at couture and see color, shape, concept, and context as it relates to the ways in which I think about painting and sculpture and figure,” Horowitz explained. “Maybe painting and fashion are both trying to grapple with similar questions about moving through the world with a body.”

Nothing on the Other Side of the Slash” will be on view at Johannes Vogt Gallery through March 31, 2018.

From left: Reel 300, by Marc Horowitz. Photo: Jeff McLane/Courtesy of Johannes VogtPhoto: Courtesy of Johannes Vogt
From left: Reel 300, by Marc Horowitz. Photo: Jeff McLane/Courtesy of Johannes VogtPhoto: Courtesy of Johannes Vogt
From left: O make me a mask and a wall to shut from your spies, HE HAD ENOUGH RESPECT FOR PAINTING to quit., This one has an odd shape., by Marc Horowitz. Photo: Courtesy of Johannes Vogt
I Wish I Could Wear These Balenciaga Paintings