Fritz Horstman

2021-22, various fabrics and wood, 5 x 12 x 6 in. (12 x 30 x 15 cm)

2021, plastic tube and cotton thread, 6 x 6 x 12 in. (15 x 15 x 30 cm)

2021, maple, glue, cotton thread, 10 x 9 x 18 in. (26 x 23 x 46 cm)

2021, black locust, elastic cord, and nylon rope, 48 x 48 x 96 in. (122 x 122 x 244 cm)

2021, various textiles and wood, 24 x 36 x 68 in. (60 x 90 x 173 cm)

2021, wood and glue, 5 x 13 x 6 in. (12 x 33 x 15 cm)

2021-22
wool and wood
variable height x 68 x 36 in. (173 x 93 cm)
Collaboration with Nan Horstman

Knit Valley installed at Ishibashi Gallery

2020-21, poplar and sisal rope, variable height x 68 x 18 in. (173 x 45 cm)

2020-2021, spruce, oak, and steel, 3 x 8 x 3” (8 x 20 x 8 cm)

2020-2021, various wood and stainless steel, 24 x 24 x 68 in. (60 x 60 x 173 cm)

2019, Maple, 24 x 24 x 68 in. (61 x 61 x 173 cm)

2018, various materials and ratchet strap, 24 x 24 x 68 in. (60 x 60 x 173 cm)

2019
3 x 3 x 5”
Fruit net, air-dry clay, fabrics, sandpaper, burlap, tulle, string

2018
14 x 8 x 1’ (4.5 x 2.5 x .5m)
Stainless steel
Permanently installed sculpture commission in Ås, Norway

2 x 8m (79 x 315”)
Drawing with text is 70 x 280cm (28 x 110”)

2019

Using materials from the Dessau Bauhaus’ Bauforschungsarchiv (building and materials archive), this assemblage was created in the ground floor gallery space of the Bauhaus Building in Dessau. The composition is based upon, among other ideas, the Bauhaus Preliminary Course exercise known as Materiestudien. The objects were selected in consultation with archive director Monika Markgraf. It will be on view at the Bauhaus until at least 2024.

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)

2017

Plywood, pine, hardware, paint.

3 x 18 x 12'

2017

Plywood, pine, hardware, paint.

3 x 18 x 12'

2015

3 x 14 x 14'

Reclaimed construction material

Commissioned for the exhibition Modern Wings and Shaker Roots at Hancock Shaker Village, Hancock, MA

2014

30"x30'x10'

Reclaimed construction material

Installed at Brooklyn Art Lot in two-person exhibition with Abe McNally.

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

2014

24" x 20' x 8'

Reclaimed construction material

Installed at The Mount in Lenox, MA for the exhibition SculptureNow.