Furniture Archive Formwork, 2013, plywood and pine, 18 x 8 x 2"
Meander, 2017, maple and basswood, 2x7x12"
Hill House Formwork, 2013, pine, 7 x 10 x 2"
Formwork with Seven Corners, 2017, basswood and maple, 2x7x7"
Windsor Court Foundation, 2014, Red Balou and Basswood, 5 x 7 x 2"
Lily Creek Formwork, 2014, Plywood and Basswood, 5 x 7 x 1"
Branching Stream, 2017, basswood, .5x5x13"
U Bend, 2014, Basswood and Plywood, 9 x 14 x 6"
Laurentide Formwork, 2013, Walnut and Basswood, 6 x 7 x 2"
Branching Creek, 2017, basswood, 6x9x1"
Mitten Creek Formwork, 2013, Walnut and Cedar, 8 x 16 x 1"
River Form, 2014, Basswood, 12 x 8 x 1"
Tetrapod A, 2016, basswood, 7x7x7"
Formwork for the Forks, 2017, maple and basswood, 3x11x8"
Tetrapod B, 2016, basswood, 7x7x7"
Formwork for a Spiral Movement, 2015, plywood and basswood, 2x10x8"
Tetrapod C, 2016, basswood, 7x7x7"
Formwork for Deep Bend, 2016, plywood and basswood, 3x8x8"
Formwork for a Moulin, 2016, basswood, 18x8x8"
Septagon, 2014, Walnut and Basswood, 7 x 7 x 1"
Rectangle, 2013, Pine and Basswood, 4 x 7 x 1"
2014, Basswood, 5 x 5 x 3"
Red Balou Grainwork, 2014, Red Balou and Basswoo, 5 x 13 x 2"
Formwork for Tall Trees, 2013, Plywood and Basswood, 6 x 6 x 2"
2014, Plywood and Basswood, 8 x 5 x 1"
Formwork with Live Edges, 2017, walnut and basswood, 9x14x1"
2017, 5x7x7", basswood
Formwork for a Water Treatment Facility in Gunma, 2015, 2x8x22", walnut and basswood
Installation at deCordova Biennial 2016-17
Svalbard
I spent the month of June 2016 with twenty-six other artists sailing around the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, participating in the Arctic Circle Residency. These photographs were made using an underwater camera on a timer attached to the end of a 100' fishing line. At regular intervals moving away from the face of a glacier, I dropped the camera into the silty water, capturing images of varying color and turbidity. This grid of photos were all taken the face of the Fjortende Julibreen glacier, pictured at the top with our ship, the Antigua.
Formworks Installed
Formwork for a Spiral Movement
2016
8 x 30 x 20'
Marine plywood, douglas fir, hardware
Commissioned by deCordova Museum and Sculpture park for
the 2016 deCordova Biennial
Lincoln, MA (photo by Scout Hutchinson)
Formwork for the East River
2017
Plywood, pine, hardware, paint.
3 x 18 x 12'
Formwork for the East River
2017
Plywood, pine, hardware, paint.
3 x 18 x 12'
Eight into Fourteen
2015
3 x 14 x 14'
Reclaimed construction material
Commissioned for the exhibition Modern Wings and Shaker Roots at Hancock Shaker Village, Hancock, MA
The London-based art critic Charles Darwent had this to say about the sculpture:
It would be easy to walk past Fritz Horstman’s Gowanus Canal, it being made of discarded construction materials and locked behind a fence on a nondescript corner in Brooklyn. Even when you realise that it is sculpture, things do not necessarily get easier. Gowanus has an air of purpose: its forms are abstract, but the work itself clearly isn’t. Nor do its materials feel poetically trashy in the way that, say, a Rauschenberg’s might. The outer face of the sculpture’s panels bear the legend “Plum Creek”, this being the trade name of their constituent plywood. I suspect this suggestion of rural innocence made them attractive to Horstman, since Gowanus is actually a scaled-down mapping of the Gowanus Canal; among the most polluted bodies of water in the world, a few hundred metres from where his sculpture stands.
Which is to say that Gowanus is cryptic, and sets out to be. Look down into its namesake canal and you seem to see (or not see) the opacity of history – a story of bald capitalism and environmental rapine, summed up in the murkiness of the Gowanus's waters. Look into Horstman’s sculpture and you find the average accretions of a Brooklyn street: a styrofoam cup, dead leaves, a wrapper that reads “Italy’s Most Loved.” Left to itself, Gowanus is turning into Gowanus, the historical processes making the one mimicking those that made the other.
But does this have a meaning? Gowanus may be a magnet for street rubbish, but it does not attract easy art history. A canal is a stretch of water between banks or, alternatively, banks with a stretch of water between them. For every thing that Horstman’s sculpture seems to be, it is equally possibly the opposite of that thing. This, perhaps, is its cleverness and its point. You may suspect a political agenda in Gowanus, or an environmental one; you may see shades of Smithson or of Schwitters. Whether those things are in the work, it is not going to say: it is not about clarity, but the opposite. The inner faces of its panels have been splashed by their previous use on a construction site: hidden away, they look like early abstract expressionist paintings. They may even be beautiful. Or, of course, they may not.
Charles Darwent
Formwork for Lily Creek
2014
24" x 20' x 8'
Reclaimed construction material
Installed at The Mount in Lenox, MA for the exhibition SculptureNow.
Tetrapods
I spent August and September 2015 as artist-in-residence at Shiro Oni Studios in Onishi, Japan, producing drawings, books, videos, sculptures and sound projects.
Japan's waterways and coasts are covered in tetrapods -- large interlocking concrete shapes meant to control erosion. In a fairly casual search I found over twenty different shapes. When the economy is slow, the government gives money to the tetrapod industry to get things moving. Japan's economy has been slow for two decades now, so tetrapods are everywhere.
These sculptures are around 6x6x6". The drawings are ink on washi paper, all roughly 11 x 9".
Folds and Ink
I spent August and September 2015 as artist-in-residence at Shiro Oni Studios in Onishi, Japan, producing drawings, books, videos, sculptures and sound projects.
These are ink drawings made by folding washi paper in various patterns and applying ink to the top fold until the entire paper was soaked, then opening the paper to let it dry. They are each approximately 9 x 12".
To Find
To Find is a collaboration between Solange Roberdeau and Fritz Horstman. Roberdeau was artist-in-residence in the autumn of 2014 at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, where Horstman runs the residency program. Every day for a month one or the other artist made a drawing of a plant found on the Foundation's seventy-acre property in central Connecticut. The drawing was given to the other artist with no mention of the name of the plant, nor its location on the property. That artist then went out to find the drawn plant, collected a sample, and pressed it. The second artist then made a drawing of a different plant. That drawing was given to the first artist, who went out to collect a sample, and the cycle repeated, each artist making fourteen drawings, and pressing fourteen plants. The resulting twenty-eight drawings and plants are displayed together in a long accordion book, which disassembles to be housed in a custom box. These photos were taken at the Institute Library in New Haven, CT.
