exhibitions

Several of my works that are in the Arter Collection, a subsidiary of the Vehbi Koç Foundation, are included in the inaugural exhibitions at the new ARTER building, opening its doors on 13^th September 2019, with previews on 10/11/12^th September.

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9 Sept 2019 – 9 Feb 2020
What Time is It?
Curated by Emre Baykal and Eda Berkmen

A show looking at memory in relation to home, objects, archives, history, archeology, land, borders, migration and representation – includes four works from my The Past is Another Country series.

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9 Sept 2019 – 8 March 2020
Words Are Very Unnecessary
Curated by Selen Ansen

A show revolving around ‘gesture’ and ‘remains’, focusing on works that highlight process-based practices and approaches. Includes several works from my Frame Paintings series.

Both shows are at:

Vehbi Koç Foundation – Arter Collection
ARTER, Istanbul, Turkey

Other shows currently on:

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Until 13 September
I’ll open the door straight, dead straight into the fire
a group show curated by WHW
State of Concept, Athens

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Ongoing
Recent Acquisitions: No Contextual Information
a collaboration with Tim Etchells
Graves Gallery, Museums Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

I’m in Chicago (2nd time in as many months) working on a new solo performance, Third Hand, which will open on the 4th of June 2019 at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Performances are
June 4th/5th/6th at 7pm
in the Sidney R Yates Gallery, on the 4th floor of the Chicago Cultural Center (Randolph Street side).

No booking required and entrance is free – the piece is supported by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) as part of the exhibition goat island archive – we have discovered the performance by making it.

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More details about the piece are in the Projects section here.

This is the spectacular Yates Gallery where the piece will be performed:

Lots going on at the moment.

I’m in Chicago, on a residency at the Graham Foundation, where I’m working on a new performance which will premiere in June at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Titled Third Hand, the piece is a commission by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) as part of the exhibition goat island archive – we have discovered the performance by making it. The piece will open at the Chicago Cultural Center on 4^th June 2019. More info about the project in the Projects section here.

A work-in-progress showing of the piece will be on 4^th April 2019 at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in Chicago, part of IN>TIME Performance festival.

I’ve been developing the piece with the artist Michael Thomas, a co-founder of the Chicago-based collaborative group Lucky Pierre which makes work across writing, performance, education, activism, and visual forms. Michael and I are will be performing the piece together.

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Meanwhile, several exhibitions featuring my work are opening elsewhere:

15 March – ongoing
Recent Acquisitions: No Contextual Information – a collaboration with Tim Etchells
Graves Gallery, Museums Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

1 April – 18 May
Loose Ends – a group show (Vlatka Horvat, Istvan Ist Huzjan, Sophie Ko, Dino Zrnec), curated by Branka Bencic
Renata Fabbri arte contemporanea, Milan, Italy

5-7 April
MiArt – booth of Eastwards Prospectus / gaep gallery, Bucharest

My first solo show at Eastwards Prospectus in Bucharest opened this past Saturday and is on until 9th February 2019. Titled Supporting Objects, the show spans both floors of the gallery’s 19th century villa.

It’s a really nice show – even if I say so myself! – happy for such a good way to end the year.

Some images of the show are in the Projects section here.

Vlatka Horvat: Supporting Objects
at Eastwards Prospectus, Bucharest
15 December 2018 – 9 February 2019

I’m taking part in the 2nd Industrial Art Biennial taking place across several cities and towns in Istria: in Labin, Raša, Pula, Vodnjan, and Rijeka. The biennial – curated by the Zagreb-based curatorial collective WHW – is organized by Labin Art Express XXI, MMSU – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, and the Archaeological Museum of Istria in Pula, and is part of Rijeka European Capital of Culture 2020. Titled On the Shoulders of Fallen Giants, the biennial takes the Istrian peninsula in Croatia as its starting point – a region marked by geographic and historic specificities and a place on the crossroads of empires, from the Greek, Roman, Venetian, Austro-Hungarian, French and Italian, to Yugoslav socialism.

You can read the press release and the full artist list on e-flux (in English) and on the biennial site (in Croatian).

The schedule of openings is as follows:

Thursday 19.07. at 8pm – Apoteka, Vodnjan
Friday, 20.07. at 12noon – Pula
Friday, 20.07. at 6pm – Raša
Friday, 20.07. at 9pm – Labin
Saturday, 21.07. at 8pm – MMSU, Rijeka

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I’m presenting two works: a series of photographs titled Monuments, which will be included in the section of the exhibition at MMSU Rijeka; and an all-day performance titled Who Come to Stand, at the entrance to the shipyard 3.Maj, Liburnijska 3, Rijeka.

The performance will take place on Saturday, 21st July, 12noon-8pm and everyone who wants to take part is welcome to join.

Scroll down for details.

In the 1965 statue at the entrance to the shipyard 3. Maj, a larger-than-life male figure cradles a model ship, watching over it in a gesture of profound attention, care, and pride. The man and the ship – a labourer-as-maker and the thing he made – mark the long-standing relation between people and the sea, humankind’s search for agency over natural forces, and its ability to build machines that conquer distance. Standing tall on the side of the road, with his head partially covered by the crown of a tree, the statue both celebrates and memorialises – and in current context also mourns – the industrial heritage of shipbuilding and seafaring, the work of the port, and the labour of the hands.

Installed on the 20^th anniversary of the liberation of Rijeka, the statue – work of the Rijeka-born sculptor Vinko Matković – stands next to the entrance of the shipyard. In a gesture of solidarity with the statue, artist Vlatka Horvat organises a performance in the form of a vigil, an action of joining the statue’s inanimate figure and standing with him holding other things worthy of being looked after, or celebrated.

Horvat invites artists and residents of Rijeka to join her at the statue, with an object they want to watch over, take care of, or magnify – a work tool perhaps, a personal item, a photograph, an item of clothing, a thing they made. Objects people might choose to hold alongside the man holding the ship might reflect one’s work and pride in work. Or they might speak of personal narrative or social change; they might speak of things lost, of lives lost, of memories that persist, or of hopes for the future. They can be objects of actual importance or significance, or metaphorical / symbolic objects that in some way stand for the thing a person may want to recognise, bring public focus to, or simply mark.

The task of the performance is to gather in a silent action on the side of the road – to stand there with something of personal or social value. A testament to persistence, perseverance, and to not standing down, Who Come to Stand creates a fragile human scale vigil in the shadow of the statue. The action of holding something becomes here a symbolic act of holding onto something – an actual object, an idea it encapsulates, a sentiment it evokes – as a quiet acknowledgment of things that survive; whether in material form, in memory, or in spirit.

Practical Notes

• If you want to take part in the performance, you can come any time between 12noon and 8pm, and stay as long as you like.
• Bring an object to hold. Stand facing the road, somewhere alongside the statue of the man with the ship. Use the statue as a model for how to stand and how to hold your object.
• The idea is to not speak to each other during the performance, to approach the action as a chance for contemplation, as a quiet act of commemorating or marking things that are important – things that might be under threat, vanishing or already gone
• The item you bring to hold in the performance can be an object of personal significance to you; or it can be something symbolic or metaphorical that stands for or evokes ideas, feelings, hopes you want to highlight.
• People of all ages are invited to join. Children are welcome.

I have work in several shows that are currently running:

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CUT: Collage in Central and Eastern European Practices at MSU – Museum of Contemporary Art. Zagreb, Croatia.
Curated by Branka Benčić and Tihomir Milovac.
05 June – 14 August 2018

I’m showing works from several series: Hybrids, The Past is Another Country, and Up in Arms.

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Smart Nature at hase29 Space for Contemporary Art. Osnabrück, Germany.
Curated by Michael Kröger, Elisabeth Lumme, and Tim Roßberg.
09 June – 11 August 2018

I’m showing a floor piece titled Always Greener, which was a commission by MARTa Herford Museum in 2016.

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And the Venice Architecture Biennale continues until 25 November 2018.

My work, a series of drawings titled To Still the Eye is part of Cloud Pergola: Architecture of Hospitality, a collaborative project for the Pavilion of Croatia at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition. Venice, Italy.

Some installation images are in the projects section here.

I have been working hard on two exciting things coming up this weekend/next week.
(Gods of Schedule Making were not kind to me when planning these two events in the same week…)

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I’m off to Venice tomorrow to install my work for the Croatian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennial, then to Hannover on Friday for a 3-day durational performance, part of KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen festival. And then – bruises and all! – back to Venice for the previews and the opening of the Biennale.

Some info on both projects below.

Venice Architecture Biennale 2018

Cloud Pergola: The Architecture of Hospitality
Pavilion of Croatia at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition

Exhibition dates: 26 May 26 – 26 November 2018
Preview: 24 -25 May 2018
Opening: Friday, 25 May, 1.30 PM

Cloud Pergola: The Architecture of Hospitality at the Croatian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 is a collaborative project crossing the boundaries of architecture, art, engineering, robotic fabrication, and computational modelling.

Conceived by the pavilion curator, Bruno Juričić, with curatorial advice from Branka Benčić, Cloud Pergola brings together three distinct propositions: a pergola structure titled Cloud Drawing by Alisa Andrašek in collaboration with Bruno Juričić, a series of acrylic drawings titled To Still the Eye by Vlatka Horvat, and a sound work Ephemeral Garden by Maja Kuzmanović & FoAM.

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About To Still the Eye:

To Still the Eye is a series of drawings made by bare feet immersed in an acrylic wash, as they slide across the surface of paper, leaving a trace of their journey in the form of a straight horizontal line.

Lifted from the floor to the wall, the tracks of the body moving on the firm ground become traces of imaginary movement on the outer edges of the built space. The imprints of the feet on the wall suggest a playful challenge of the body’s relation to space and to gravity, and the line – at once continuous and interrupted with the marks made by the feet falling, touching down, losing balance – appears as an attempt to scale the circumference of the room using the body’s range of movement as a measuring device.

Running around the space as a fence of sorts, the traced line points to the tangible outer boundary of the room, “confirming” the walls’ presence and solidity as a frame and a container for human action. At the same time, the line performs a certain canceling gesture, enacting a perceptual cut in the wall to suggest distances beyond the confines of the built environment. In that sense, the drawings comprising To Still the Eye conjure the horizon, as a physical manifestation of distance, an endpoint destination for the eye, and a metaphor for the future and for a sense of possibility.

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Location of the Croatian Pavilion:

Artiglierie
Arsenale
CAMPIELLO TANA 2169/F
30122 VENEZIA
Italy

The participation of Croatia at the 16^th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is organized by Moderna Galerija – National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb with financial support provided by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia. Additional support provided by City of Pula.

This Here and That There – Herrenhäuser Quartet
A performance by Vlatka Horvat at KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen Hannover

Dates: 19 / 20/ 21 May 2018
11am – 7pm daily

Performed by:
Karen Christopher, Noémie Solomon, Season Butler, Vlatka Horvat

I have work in three shows opening this month:

I Am the Mouth: Works from The Art Collection Telekom at MSU – Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia. Curated by Nathalie Hoyos, Radmila Iva Jankovic and Rainald Schumacher.

19 January – 18 March

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Natural Artifice: Architecture, Photography and the Construction of Reality at The Glass Tank Gallery, Oxford. Curated by Frederik Petersen / Entreentre.

22 January – 23 February

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Borderline Relation at Eastwards Prospectus, Bucharest, Romania. Curated by Tevz Logar.

25 January – 24 March