Sabine Hornig at Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm

Sabine Hornig: Balkong (Balcony)
Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm
28 February - 28 March, 2004

Galleri Lars Bohman presents German artist Sabine Hornig’s first exhibition at the gallery. ‘Balkong’ (Balcony) consists of a sculptural installation and a series of large-format photographs.

Sabine Hornig often combines photography with sculpture, reconstructings everyday elements of architecture. Both her sculptures and photographs explore the membrane between the interior and the exterior. She stresses the difference between the inside and the outside of a given space often using the principle of doubling to invoke slight changes in the observer’s perception. The gallery space is always integral to and part of the work. 

Sabine Hornig’s constructions are built to subtly reconfigure viewer and object relations within exhibition spaces. Although not strictly site-specific, the installation sculptures are custom-made to suit the given exhibition situation and to address the visiting public. Her installations are based on existing structures or prototypes of architecture. The sculpture ‘Balkong’ (Balcony) represents a typical balcony as it can be seen on any modernist building. It is detached from its original setting, the exterior, and transferred into the interior. The balcony is covered with stucco, which - besides the clean, impersonal architecture - adds to its stereotypical features, characterising the balcony as a standard element of urban architecture. The balcony is attached by its narrow side to the wall and juts out into the gallery, - forming a barrier across the space. One can walk alongside and around the balcony and look over it and out of the gallery’s window. 

A balcony is the private space in a home that quite literally and physically projects privacy into the public realm. It is a holiday idyll and an observation point. Republics are proclaimed from balconies. In representational architecture the balcony is the platform for those who reign and for politicians to make public appearances from.

The interaction between interior and exterior within the exhibition is intensified by a series of large-format photographs depicting windows: double or single frame windows offer views into empty or abandoned storefronts, a common enough sight in Berlin. The reflections on the glass refer to the surrounding exterior. These photographs could be read as documenting the current economic situation. However, the ephemeral aspects of the reflections transcend the specificity of the place. 

In these complex compositions, that allow an examination of space through reflective surfaces, once again different levels link. Although the window allows a view into an interior, this view is distorted by the reflection of the exterior, the opposite space that is mirrored in the glass. Thus, the gallery walls transform into a façade on which the photographic image opens a window into another space. Finally, viewers become aware of their own reflections on the photograph’s surface and they are then, too, integrated into the virtuality of the image. The familiar experience of walking past storefront windows is rendered less familiar, and viewers are left to consider their place within these real and reflected spaces.

In 2003 Sabine Hornig mounted a major installation in the Project Space of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In this installation Hornig pushed the limits of the interplay with the layers of perception and reflection to its virtual extreme. In 1998-2000 she was a participating artist in the P.S.1 International Studio Program in New York, and in 1998 she was awarded the prestigious Karl Schmidt-Rotluff Stipendium.

Born in Baden-Würtemberg, Germany in 1964, Sabine Hornig currently lives and works in Berlin. She received her B. A. and M.F.A. from the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Hornig has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin (2000, 2002 and 2003), Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, (2001 and 2002), and Malmö Konstmuseet, Malmö, Sweden (1996). 

GALLERI LARS BOHMAN
www.gallerilarsbohman.com