2012 – 2023
Fenced Off Area, 2012
Reclaimed wood, canvas webbing, staples
Installation views from GOOD LIFE, the 53rd October Salon at the Geozavod building, Belgrade
Starting from the radiators in the corner of the room and continuing out into the central space, a makeshift crudely constructed fence curves around the area in the floor where some parquet slats are missing, creating an appearance that this hole in the floor has been cordoned off. Evoking strategies of protection of space, prevention of injury, and more generally, regulation of access into an area deemed “un-enterable”, this unfinished, and in places unstable and collapsing, fence structure enacts provisional spatial segmentation, speaking to the temporary nature of organized/divided space, its impermanence and porousness. The gesture of sectioning off a previously existing hole in the floor’s surface with an intervention whose scale is bigger than the scale of the apparent “problem,” invokes the possibilities and problematics of spatial organization – affecting use of space and its navigation. A kind of a parasitic presence in the room, the incomplete fence – which here additionally misrecognizes and incorporates the radiator into its structure – is performing the role of a space divider, as well as an obstacle course, altering both the physical space and the visitors’ movement in it, sending them onto a maze-like path and into a semi-circular spin in the centre of the room.
By cordoning off the central area of the room – drawing a line around the space – this provisional fence constructs and proposes the middle of the room as a staging ground for an undisclosed and unspecified purpose, by designating it as an area separate from the rest of the room, separate from the margins of the space. The act of fencing off an area performs an additional segmentation of the space of the room, creating inside it further instances of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Surrounding an area with a cordon gives it a kind of “special status”, and marks it as a space that’s protected, secured, or featured in some way; or else into which (or out of which) access is restricted. The gesture of drawing a line around an area draws attention to it, inviting us to see it as a space of importance and potential, as a space where “something might happen.” At the same time, it’s a gesture that separates both the space and its implied inhabitants, evoking holding pens, animal enclosures, police lines, etc. to speak of the world in which borders, barriers and excessive cordoning have become the norm.
Fence (Repurposed), 2023
Reclaimed wood, canvas webbing, staples
Installation views from Vidljive / The Visible Ones at MSU – Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb
On the Losing Side, 2020
Plywood, wooden ladder, moving blanket, carpeting
Up and Over, 2020
Plywood, wooden stick, PVC profile, foam, elastic
No Head for Heights, 2020
Plywood, wood, cardboard, canvas strap, brick
Installation views from …of bread, wine, cars, security and peace at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
Assembly Line, 2013-15
Various found objects and materials
Installation views from Vlatka Horvat: And Other Claims at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Portland, OR; Vlatka Horvat: According to Plan at MMC Pula and Galerija SC, Zagreb; and Beyond the Obvious: Material, Sample, Remix at Erika Beak Gallery, Budapest
In Assembly Line, Horvat makes an arrangement of found materials – sticks, bricks, cardboard tubes, plastic crates – to crudely indicate/enact a line or division in the space – at once a fence and a line of crude humanoid or almost human figures.
Assembly Line makes play with the relation of human and object, making an optical play around the line of scrap / discarded materials and the temporary appearance or ghosting of a set of human figures. The arrangement/materials used in the work are simple, with an apparently homemade and casual aesthetic, but the possibility of presence they summon is complex and multilayered, offering powerful evocation of things both abstract and narratively suggestive or readable.
