‘You Know the Bird That Does That Crazy Mating Dance? That Was Me’: Artists Petra Cortright and Marc Horowitz on Their Zany Courtship

Sometimes romances are born of
charming chance encounters and novelistic meet-cutes. Other times,
they begin with two people drunk in a hot tub. The latter was the
case for Petra Cortright and Marc Horowitz, two LA-based artists
who have been together for seven years, married for four, and who
recently welcomed a newborn baby. 

Cortright and Horowitz are the
kind of couple whose dynamic makes sense immediately. Speaking with
Artnet News over Skype last month, Marc, still recovering from an
unpleasant episode of “bad clams and salmon roe over the weekend,”
chugs seltzer while recounting his cocksure efforts to woo Petra,
who is much more reserved—and yet not impervious to his strange
humor.

“I thought you were annoying,”
she says dryly.

The two are sitting in Marc’s
large Altadena studio, his primary-colored canvases in the
background. Despite making names for themselves as Post-Internet
kids who straddled the lines of video, performance, and other
mediums, both Cortright and Horowitz have migrated to painting in
recent years. Petra opens a show of new work at Team Gallery
this week, while Marc is prepping
for forthcoming exhibitions in Yucatan and Majorca.

For the latest installment of
Portraits of Love, an interview series focusing on the
inner workings of artist couples, the two met with us to discuss
the ways in which they’ve influenced each others’ work, how they
balance their professional and personal lives, and how they fell in
love. 

I read somewhere that you guys met in a hot tub. Is that
true?

Marc: That’s
accurate. It was in Venice, California, at the home of a friend we
had in common.

Petra: I was
hanging out with some artists who were in town. We were swimming in
Malibu and it was getting kind of late and cold, so I called that
[mutual] friend—the only person I knew who lived on the west side.
I said, “We’re cold and we don’t want to sit in rush hour traffic
right now. Do you know anyone with a hot tub?” He was like, “It’s
so weird that you’re calling me right now. I’m sitting in a hot
tub—come over.”

Marc: I was
there first, right? I was getting pretty tanked up—I had had a
couple of beers and a little weed. Then this girl got in the hot
tub and I was just gobsmacked. I was like, “Who is
this?”

Petra: And I
was just like, “That guy is so weird.” You were saying weird stuff,
doing crazy things. Everyone was clearly thinking, “What is up with
that guy?” But later, like three hours into meeting Marc, I
realized that I knew who he was. I had actually read about his work
when I was at Parsons, and I had heard our mutual friend Marisa
[Olsen] talk about him before.

Marc: About how
handsome I was? 

Petra: No!
Anyway, you were still a weirdo, but after we made the connection
that we both knew Marissa, you were at least a verified weirdo.
You’re lucky that you knew Marissa because, otherwise, I would have
said there’s no way.

Marc: After
that, it was late and we were ready to go and I was like, “Hey,
Petra, I’ve got some really great mezcal—why don’t you just stay at
my house?”

Petra: I needed
a ride. And his house was not as messy as his behavior. He actually
had a really nice place. There were signs of life.

Marc: I had
real furniture and a big TV and a nice guest bed. You know that
bird that does that crazy mating dance? That was me. I had made my
little nest just right for her.

Petra:
Technically I moved in with him that first night. I had just moved
to LA. I didn’t have like a lot of stuff going on and we were
partying a lot.

Marc: I
remember after a couple of days, I called a friend of mine from
grad school and said, “I’ve found the woman I’m going to marry.” He
was like, “Bro, you’ve got to slow your roll
here.” 

But you were right! So when did the proposal happen?

Marc: I
proposed to her at a sushi restaurant that her parents used to go
to in Little Tokyo. It was called Frying Fish. It had a conveyor
belt.

Petra: It’s no
longer there.

Marc: I got the
ring and I called the sushi place to set everything up. Then I had
to get Petra into a nearby grocery store somehow so I could sneak
over to the restaurant. I told them, “Put it in a piece of sushi.
When I ask for this particular sushi, you’re going to put it on the
conveyor belt and it’s going to come around and I’m going to give
it to Petra.” When I got her into the grocery store, she was like,
“Why am I in a grocery store and why are you leaving? This is
fishy.” No pun intended. Then the ring came around she just said,
“What is that?”

Petra: I didn’t
have the sweetest reaction. 

Marc: But she
said “yes,” and that’s all that matters.

What was the wedding like?

Petra: It was a
picnic-style wedding on the lawn at a friend’s house. We made all
of the blankets that people sat on. 

Marc: My best
man was an artist, Joe Reihsen. He made all of the tables. Petra’s
family made all the pies.

Petra: A lot of
friends helped out. It was really special. And Stella McCartney did
the dress. I had just started working with her that year and was
like, “Oh, it’s so nice to meet you and work with you. By the way,
can you give me a wedding dress?” So I traded her a video for a
custom dress. She had bought a few videos before. She’s
amazing.

Marc: Then we
recycled all the blankets afterward and Petra’s mom made actual
quilts. She’s still using the fabric.

And you recently had your first child?

Marc: We’ve
reproduced.

Petra: He was
born last October. He’s wonderful. 

I imagine he’s had a significant impact on the way you
work?

Petra: I think
the biggest thing is that it’s made us refocus our time. Before, I
could just wake up and say, “Do I feel like working today?” Now,
I’ll get a couple of hours [to myself], and then I just have to go
to work. I think I had to learn to be more disciplined, but it was
actually kind of nice because sometimes you can get in a rut when
you don’t have that.

Marc: And we’re
actually going out more and being more social now than we were
prior.

Petra: We go to
a lot more openings.

Marc: He’s
very, very sweet. It was tough at first, though. Through those
first few months, we were waking up every one or two hours. And
then people are like, “But isn’t it beautiful?” And I was like,
“Piss off.” But it was good. We were in it together, you know? We
have three chihuahuas and a fish, too. It’s a full ticket
here. 

What do your studio lives look like? Are your workspaces
connected to the house?

Petra: Marc’s
studio is in the back in a separate building behind the garden. I
work from a small room upstairs. I’m almost like a writer because I
don’t physically produce the work; I just work on my computers. I
like to work from a small, cozy room, and I always have to have a
bed in there. Because my studio has always been my computer, I got
used to working out of my bedroom, so now I have to recreate that
domestic environment to work to do my best work.

Marc: I’m the
opposite. I spread, man. Our studio before this was 9,000 square
feet. It had an indoor archery range—I mean it was like some Bruce
Wayne shit. Petra hated it because it was so cavernous.

Petra: I never
liked that place. Being in an outside studio made me feel like I
had a job. I hated it.

Marc: In that
regard, we’re very different. I work with my hands, I like to feel
my way through materials. She’s on her computer. I thank baby Jesus
that we’re not the same kind of painter because I think that that
would be a nightmare.

Petra: I love
being an artist; I love art and there are a lot of amazing people
in the art world. But at the same time, the art world can be a
toxic place. There’s a lot of jealousy and people can be extremely
careerist. I think for us having a family and a home was always
really important—it can protect us from that toxicity.

Marc: It was
always important for us to have more than one reason to exist. We
never wanted to live and die by going to openings.

Despite garnering a lot of attention early on in your careers
for your work in digital media, you’ve both turned toward painting
in recent years. Have you influenced each other in that
way?

Petra: Yeah,
for sure. We’re definitely huge fans of color. I’ll actually come
in and take pictures of his underpaintings—I take the textures and
use them in my work. He gets so mad.

Marc: I like
the cross-pollination. I think it’s very important, if you’re going
to be in a relationship with another artist. I’ll ask her for
advice when I’m working on something. There’s a painting of hers
that’s in the upstairs hallway that I stare at when I wake up in
the morning and it’s been a tremendous influence on me. I love
seeing it every single day. I know that painting in and out now. We
also share the same books and we’ll send each other a bunch of
jokes all day long.

Petra: But we
have pretty different working styles. You’re a planner. You like to
talk about your work before you make it and look at other peoples’
work, too. I can’t talk to anyone. I just need total silence. I
need to be by myself.

You two collaborated for a joint show at the BANK Gallery in
Shanghai in 2018. Was that the first time you properly teamed
up? 

Petra: Actually, the first time we collaborated was
for a Stella McCartney menswear video. I wasn’t really sure how it
was going to go because we had never worked together, but it was
fine. We had a good time doing it. We both come from a video
background so it wasn’t that crazy.

Marc: She used
her webcam and I used this old VHS camera.

Petra:
My part took like five minutes;
yours took forever.

Did the Shanghai show go that way too?

Petra: Yeah, I
think so. I thought the paintings for the BANK show looked good
together. We are not minimalists; we always have a lot of color in
the work. That’s probably the biggest crossover between us—the
palette. We both love color so much. It’s the thing I think that we
enjoy talking about the most. 

Marc, I was looking back at some coverage of you early on in
your career. There were some interesting choices in the
facial hair department. Especially the mustache—I really was struck
by that. Petra, how do you feel about that mustache? Time for him
to bring it back?

Marc: Oh my
God.

Petra: So
bad.

Marc: There
were a lot of bad hair decisions—I had a mullet, a rat tail, a chin
strap. I was out of control.

Petra: If I had
met him then it would have been a hard pass.

Marc: The rat
tail was my favorite, though. And I had a pseudonym that I worked
under: Burt Dollot. Burt Dollot plus a rat tail was just—that was
some shady, used-car-salesman stuff.

Petra: So
creepy. But Marc is a nice guy, though. He’s really funny. He takes
really good care of me.

Marc: And we
have a hot tub at this house now!

Maybe future artist couples will meet there.

Petra: I hope
so!

Marc: That
would be amazing.

The post ‘You Know the Bird That Does That Crazy Mating
Dance? That Was Me’: Artists Petra Cortright and Marc Horowitz on
Their Zany Courtship appeared first on artnet News.