In keeping with the late career success experienced by Channa Horwitz in the years leading up to her death this past April (at the age of 80), it was recently announced that the Los Angeles artist will be represented in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. This comes fast on the heels of her inclusion in “The Encyclopedic Palace” at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and “Made in L.A.” at the Hammer Museum (2012), as well as a solo exhibition at François Ghebaly Gallery this past spring.

Although she worked in relative obscurity for decades, Horwitz in fact enjoyed a modest presence in the LA art scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1969, for example, eight dancers performed an interpretation of one of her “Sonakinatography” compositions (a system of notation Horwitz developed to organize time, space, color, movement, and sound) at an Experiments in Art and Technology show at the University of Southern California.

Despite the apparent order and logic of Horwitz’s compositions, she acknowledged in a 1974 interview in LAICA Journal, “The colors I choose are arbitrary. The fact that I chose eight objects in all of my compositions is arbitrary. But once I choose something arbitrarily I then consistently use what I have chosen. I am interested in simplifying my tools in order to maximize the potential of the work.” You can read more about Horwitz’s systems of notation and early performance work by accessing the full PDF of the interview here.

Image: Channa Horwitz, Movement #2, Sheet C, 2nd Variation, 1969. Pen on paper, 39 x 33 cm. Aanant & Zoo.