Solo Exhibition: Vlatka Horvat

December 7, 2013 – January 12, 2014
Photos courtesy of Vlatka Horvat

Vlatka Horvat presents an ambitious new installation created on site, shown in a dialogue with new works on paper.

Using a set of materials and objects to create a series of overlapping fences, haphazardly erected cordons, barriers, and makeshift enclosures meandering through the entire space of Disjecta’s main gallery, Horvat’s installation investigates gestures and strategies of partitioning and demarcating of physical space, constructing multiple “temporary territories” within the confines of these provisional, improvised spatial divisions.

Bringing to the fore a relation of reorganization of space to cartography, land surveying, zoning and urban planning, the project also teases out a connection of spatial division to the practices of drawing and choreography. While concretely reconstituting the physical space itself, Horvat’s interventions in the gallery map out different paths and trajectories through the room, constructing a new set of possibilities (and limitations) for moving in and through it. In that sense, the work engages the question of human presence in space, as different barriers, cordons and maze-like structures erected in the room effectively re-choreograph the movement of visitors through the gallery.

The project represents a continuation of Horvat’s ongoing investigations into the relationship between a human body and the physical context in which we operate. Her projects in different forms and media (sculpture, installation, performance) often start from an encounter with a physical space – a built environment, a room, aspects of landscape – and are driven by the question of how space and the way it’s organized might affect, influence, and even determine our behavior and movement in it.

Vlatka Horvat is an artist based in London and New York, working in sculpture, installation, drawing, and performance. Her work often tackles the problematics of occupying space and engages the complex spatial and social dynamics between everyday objects, bodies, landscape, and elements of built space. Horvat’s projects have recently been shown at the Marta Herford Museum, Germany; Stroom den Hague, Holland; MoMA PS1 and The Kitchen, both in New York; Boston University Art Gallery; Istanbul Biennial; 53rd October Salon, Belgrade; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; and at galleries Rachel Uffner, New York; ZAK | BRANICKA, Berlin; and annex14, Zurich.