2015-20
Balance Beam #0320, 2020
Wooden chairs, wooden beams, various objects
Installation views from …of bread, wine, cars, security and peace at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
Balance Beam #0715, 2015
Wooden chairs, wooden beam, various objects
Installation views from Minimal Forms of Reality at Galeria Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow
Balance Beam #0616, 2016
Wooden chairs, wooden beam, various objects
Installation views Your Country Does Not Exist at Galerija Nova, Zagreb
Balance Beam comprises a long wooden beam prompted on top of two chairs, stretched across the space. On top of the beam are constellations of found objects and materials – all of them round or tubular – precariously balanced on the beam’s precipice.
Explicitly referencing a balancing beam used in gymnastics, Balance Beam stages a situation in which objects are encountered in a precarious spatial condition, teetering on the edge, between the state of stability and the potential collapse. A wooden beam that holds them up is itself tenuously balanced on the backs of two mismatched chairs of approximately the same height. The beam is thus performing a kind of a double balancing act: it’s both the thing being balanced (on top of, we might say, inadequate supports), and the ground upon which other objects are balancing. As one of the basic building materials used in construction, the beam’s usual association with sturdiness and structural support is here put into question. There seems to be no solid ground in this spatial situation: not for the beam, nor for the line of objects on top.
Built using gestures of stacking and multiple levels of balancing – things on top of other things – the piece sits in the space as a decidedly provisional and makeshift structure, presenting, as it were, roll-able objects and materials temporarily stopped in a moment of stasis and apparent calm or composure, before a presumably inevitable fall. With its gesture of drawing a solid line across the space, Balance Beam asserts itself in the room as an obstacle or a barrier of sorts, directing and choreographing movement trajectories. The piece – paradoxically perhaps – both partitions the space in half, whilst also forming a bridge from one chair to another, offering a wobbly path across, from the grounded safety of one resting place to another.
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Texts and press:
Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 by Maja and Reuben Fawkes. World of Art series. Thames & Hudson, 2020.
ArtPyre (link) – Nov 2020: “Vlatka Horvat: Listening to What the Objects Want.” Feature by Ian Pedigo.
Kunsthalle Wien podcast of me talking about my new works in …of bread, wine, cars, security and peace (soundcloud / YouTube) – May 2020
Counterpoise, 2016
Wooden sticks, door stoppers, various objects
