DRAG: Jason Horowitz

Jason Horowitz's provocative large-scale and extreme close-up photographs of expressive drag queens conjure a multitude of reactions. Horowitz continues his ongoing interest in exploring the intersection of landscape and portraiture and how hyper-realism morphs into abstraction. Shot with the same "glamour" lighting set-up used for fashion images, these photographs subvert that process to look at what is real rather than ideal.

In the new body of work entitled DRAG, a new psychological element enters the artist's earlier explorations of faces and bodies. The theatrical artifice of the make-up, similar to a mask, is at once concealing and revealing. We find ourselves shocked, drawn in, immersed, fascinated, yet a bit squeamish. Horowitz masterfully plays with the tension between attraction and repulsion. The over-the-top vamping and exhibitionist joy of drag queens is tempered by a simultaneous sadness and introspection. By exploding scale, Horowitz reveals not only the fascinating visual terrain of the face but also challenges our own hidden biases about femininity and masculinity, beauty and ugliness, gay culture, race, sexuality, and aging.

Horowitz initiated this series by shooting Washington DC's acclaimed drag queen, Shi-Queeta Lee. Word spread quickly among her friends, so Horowitz was able to photograph many of the city's finest performers over the past two years. Most recently, two of his drag queen photographs were selected by internationally known collector Mera Rubell of The Rubell Collection for the Washington Project for the Art's "Cream" exhibition that opens Saturday, January 30 at the Katzen Art Center. http://auction.wpadc.org/ Two monumentally-scaled drag queens are included in the upcoming "Transhuman Conditions", an important exhibition curated by Jeffry Cudlin that opens tonight, January 29, at The Arlington Arts Center. http://www.arlingtonartscenter.org/transhuman-conditions

This is the second solo exhibition of Jason Horowitz's work at Curator's Office. Horowitz has exhibited his work at the Katzen Art Center, Washington, DC; The Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; Peer Gallery, New York, NY; The Siber Gallery, Goucher College, Baltimore, MD; The Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, NY; NEXT Chicago Art Fair; Civilian Art Projects, Washington, DC; Blue Sky Art Center, Portland, OR; The Light Factory, Charlotte, NC; Aqua Art Miami Fair, Miami Beach, FL; The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA; Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany; McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA; the Ellipse Art Center, Arlington, VA; Longwood Center for the Visual Arts, Georgetown University Art Gallery, Washington, DC; School 33, Baltimore, MD; Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC; and the Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA. His work is in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. He was the winner of the 2007 Aaron Siskind Award in Photography.