My show, Surroundings, opened this week at Renata Fabbri arte contemporanea in Milan. It’s on until 20 January 2018.

You can see the documentation here.

And here some words from the press release:

In Surroundings, Vlatka Horvat’s first solo show at Renata Fabbri arte contemporanea, the artist approaches the idea of horizon line as spatial limit and border whilst at the same time exploring its powerful and contradictory metaphorical status as aspirational destination. In works manifested in different forms and media – altered photographic image, collage, sculpture, and fragile site-responsive material interventions – she renders the horizon as an edge of space and visibility, and as a sign or site of future potential and action.

Horvat’s approach begins with a new series of collage works titled End in Sight. In each of them, the artist cuts parts of the image that contain the horizon and relocates them over lone human figures standing in natural landscapes, connecting the cut horizon lines to their counterpart on the other side of the figure. The new, longer horizon line produced via this procedure is no longer interrupted with the presence of the figure, but rather leaves the figures interrupted, obscured or even blanked out. Multiplying and extending the land and sky to “repair” the caesura enacted by human presence, Horvat’s work poses the horizon line as a “replacement” for the eyes; it takes the place of the eyes, rather than being a destination for the eyes. This “takeover” of the landscape upon the human figure further draws attention to the symbiotic relation between the natural setting and living beings inhabiting it, whilst pointing to the problematic aspects of our presence in landscape as well as our “lostness” in it.

A similar contradiction lies at the heart of At Some Length, a fragile sculptural intervention which Horvat uses to connect the front and back spaces of the upstairs gallery. Made from scraps of string and elastic knotted together to form a single line, the work follows the path of the existing walls of the room, a frail marking of – and on – an already existing solid spatial barrier. Ambiguous in purpose and intention, Horvat’s intervention is at the same time an improvised measure of the space and a rudimentary territorial marking or fence reminiscent of barbed wire – however materially inadequate for that purpose. It is also a simple dividing line, separating the room into what lies above and below this temporary division – a crude landscape drawing conjuring spatial expanse and distance on the walls of the gallery.

In the other collage works in the show – grouped under the name Tree Line – Horvat intervenes repeatedly on an image depicting trees at a waterline of a lake, their forms reflected perfectly in water below. This uncanny already doubled horizon line is subjected to a series of diverse interventions which at time emphasize and at other times obscure or render illegible the strip of the horizon.

The procedure of using the line as both a means of connecting and of separating is used again in the set of two sculptural works titled Set Right in which Horvat first cuts up wooden tables, removing certain parts from them – the table top in one instance and a leg in another – and then performs the gesture of “repairing” the missing parts of these objects with cardboard strips – once again using a temporary material, decidedly inadequate for the job. In this process the tables are altered from functional everyday objects into non-utilitarian ones. The line used to “repair” or complete them creates here a field of action that is simultaneously material and imaginary, as the lines extend, re-frame and re-imagine the tables as hollow 3-dimensional line drawings in space, marking out the boundaries of newly created enterable spaces.

Throughout Surroundings Horvat works and reworks the line as a compositional element central to framing and making readable human presence in space, approaching the line both as a means of tracing our presence and as a trace left by our presence. In addition to the compositional significance of the line – its function to delineate space, demarcate limits and boundaries, and trace trajectories – the show also focuses on the line as a common metaphor for continuity, infinity and distance and as a sign of future, of possibility, and of the end.

Renata Fabbri arte contemporanea is showing a bunch of my work at artissima in Torino this week, alongside Goldschmied & Chiari. Both of our works shown at the fair are in different ways circling around disappearances, illusions, and attempts at magic.

Here are the details:

artissima 2017
Main Section
Hall: Pink B – 
Stand n°6

OVAL Lingotto Fiere
via Giacomo Mattè Trucco 70
10126 Torino
, Italy

The image above is from a new series of collages, titled Vanishing Acts, which enact rather crude interventions upon the pages of an 1897 Victorian book divulging secrets of magic.

I have work in a couple of exhibitions opening in the next few days.

Opening on 19 September at The Showroom in London, Everything we see could also be otherwise (My sweet little lamb…) features some seminal historical pieces by artists from Central, Eastern and South-East Europe from the Vienna-based Kontakt Art Collection and puts them in a dialogue with other historical and contemporary work. The show is the epilogue of a project curated by What, How & for Whom/WHW in collaboration with Kathrin Rhomberg, which unfolded in Zagreb between November 2016 and May 2017.

With work by: Geta Brătescu, Lutz Becker, Josef Dabernig, Nika Dubrovsky, Tim Etchells, VALIE EXPORT, Stano Filko, Marcus Geiger, Tomislav Gotovac, Vlatka Horvat, Sanja Iveković, Běla Kolářová, Július Koller, Jiří Kovanda, KwieKulik, Katalin Ladik, Dora Maurer, Oscar Murillo, David Maljković, Paul Neagu, Neša Paripović, Ewa Partum, Manuel Pelmuş, Cora Pongracz, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Mladen Stilinović, Petr Štembera, Goran Trbuljak, Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor, Stephen Willats.

I’m showing a new version of my piece Reinforcements plus a selection of collages from the series The Past Is Another Country and With the Sky on Their Shoulders.

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And on 15 September at Galerija Galzenica in Velika Gorica, a show titled Temporary Encounters presents selection of the work previously exhibited at apoteka space for contemporary art in Vodnjan, Istria, curated by Branka Benčić.

With work by: Jasmina Cibic, Igor Eskinja, Petra Feriancova, Tina Gverović & Siniša Ilić, Vlatka Horvat, Marko Lulic, Damir Očko , Mladen Stropnik, Marko Tadic , Dino Zrnec & Nick Oberthaler

I’m showing a diminishing stack of text works titled What Remains and a stop-motion animation loop, Moves Walk.

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Here are the details and links for both shows:

20 September – 11 November 2017
Everything we see could also be otherwise (My sweet little lamb…)
The Showroom, London, UK
Curated by WHW, Kathrin Rhomberg and Emily Pethick, in collaboration with the Kontakt Art Collection

Opening reception: 19 September, 6.30-8.30pm

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15 September – 7 October 2017
Temporary Encounters
Galerija Galzenica, Velika Gorica, Croatia
Curated by Branka Benčić

During the month of September, my video This Here and That There (Berlin) is included in Deceleration, a Carte Blanche program for ikonoTV, curated by Claudia Löffelholz.

With videos by Jani Ruscica & Sini Pelkki, Maria Jose Arjona, Niklas Goldbach, Francesca Grilli, Luigi Presicce, William Lamson, Virginia Zanetti, Filippo Berta, Vlatka Horvat, Francesco Cardarelli.

The program is on at 9pm (Berlin/NYC/Shanghai time) every Friday on ikonoTV or you can watch it on ikono-on-demand here.