2007 – 2018
Holes Grid, 2018
Collage on Bristol board
Masked, 2018
Tissue paper, electrical tape on plexi
Cutoffs Stack, 2013
Inkjet prints cutoffs, mounting board
Layered with Felt, 2013
Inkjet prints, paper cutoffs, felt, mounting board
Margins (Dense)
Margins (Sparse), 2013
A4 paper margins cutoffs, Davey board, mounting board
Repaired with Red, 2013
Cut up inkjet print, electrical tape, mounting board
Rough Surfaced, 2013
Floor sanding paper, mounting board
Torn Red Strips
Torn Grey Strips, 2013
Torn inkjet print, watercolor paper, mounting board
Torn Red Pile, 2013
Torn inkjet print, watercolor paper, mounting board
Torn Blue Edge, 2013
Torn pastel paper, mounting board
Scores (I-IV), 2013
Carbon paper scratch transfer on polypropylene paper
Overprints (I, II), 2013
Inkjet prints
That Takes Place of Another (01-05), 2013
Inkjet print cutouts collage mounted on archival board
Collages comprising the series That Takes Place of Another are made of cutoffs of Horvat’s previous collage works. In these pieces, the “leftover” edges of images are combined with edges and margins of other images to make new unexpected pictures and spaces, composed of fragments brought together from different, disparate sources.
Found Wanting
Found Wanting (Two), 2012
Inkjet print cutouts dry mounted on archival mounting board
Equilibrium drawings, 2016/17
Torn paper, thread
Torn paper, electrical tape
Repurposed, 2007
Collage on paper
Repurposed is a series of 10 collages, playfully proposing a set of diverse imagined alterations to a particular physical space, re-imagining this same space as a site of improbable uses and far-fetched purposes: a hospital, a prison, a refugee intake center, a brothel, a boxing or cock fighting ring, an office complex, a sweat shop, public toilets, a bus depot, a luna park…
Each of the ten collages starts with the same floorplan of a space, on which I have intervened in different ways with glued images, sketches, diagrams and text fragments indicating changes and alterations that would have to be made to the space in order to turn it into something else. The project engages in a sort of a game of ‘what if’ by proposing a series of plans for reorganizing the space, with a particular focus on conjuring up conflicting and disparate uses, all superimposed on this one room, the multitude of purposes any particular space would not be able to accommodate.
The work uses the blueprint of an art gallery – gallery Forum Stadtpark in Graz, Austria – as a “model” on which to demonstrate these fictional-but-plausible interventions. This particular floorplan functions as a kind of an example, a surrogate or a stand-in for the built space more broadly: looking at these collages, one can substitute in their minds this particular space with any number of rooms, spaces, buildings that have been subjected to these kinds of revisionary architectural acts over time – some reflecting current social realities and needs, others a result of political will of the moment, urban planning experiments, revolutionary and illegitimate taking-over of space, etc. Treating the space as a mere physical container to be filled with various other objects, purposes, desires and agendas, the work can be seen as an exploration of acts and gestures of space reconfiguration and repurposing in a more general sense.
Further, this game of conjuring up different (wrong, silly, misguided) possibilities for a physical space also introduces a set of questions about the wider social and political context and invites speculation about what the world outside this reconfigured space might be like. Concretely – if this particular gallery were to be repurposed and turned into a refugee camp for instance, or a makeshift hospital, or a brothel – what might that suggest about the circumstances in the city and the implied change that might have taken place in the outside world? What sorts of events and conditions might have prompted such a radical/absurd reordering of a space? The gesture of reimagining a space as a range of different spaces, simultaneously proposes the outside world as a fictional place, operating in ways different that the ones we have come to expect.
In a wider sense then, the work is interested in the question of social order and change – and the relationship of spaces and their configurations to the experience and lives of those inhabiting them. In a playful and potentially subversive way, proposals at the heart of Repurposed begin to contest the use and the very idea of public space by socially repurposing it for a myriad alternate uses – some practical and plausible perhaps, others ridiculous, mischievous, troubling, and utterly inappropriate.
