A Sculptured View: Artist Alexa Horochowski (Interview)

Alexa Horochowski

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Alexa Horochowski will be exhibiting a selection of her extraordinary work at the Burnet Gallery in Minneapolis this week. An artist with a background in journalism and art, she effectively communicates her thoughts with a visual mastery all her own. Not just a painter, or writer, Horochowski is also an esteemed sculptor whose thought provoking work has gained much praise. Cloud Cave, the aritsts solo show which opens Friday May 6, will encompass a marriage between familiar architectural and manmade objects, transformed to produce a virtual landscape that is both thrilling to experience as it is complex. In preparation for her show, we ask the Argentian-American artist about her interests, her creative process, and overall direction of her current work.

Alexa Horochowski

Cloud Cave (currently being installed)

You once described your drawings as "performance pictures", what do you mean by that?
I was referring to temporary wall paintings that existed in the gallery, solely for the duration of the exhibition, such as Vaqueras (Franklin Art Works, 2002). I did a number of these over a period of several years. I usually had about a week to complete these murals, and I think when viewing them people sensed this immediacy; a latent presence of the painter as performer. It’s a method of collapsing the space between studio and gallery.

What first inspired you to integrate sculpture, manmade objects and the idea of landscape?
I was working with the supine figure of a boy sleeping. Seeing the sculpture on the floor of my studio every day made me consider the studio itself as landscape. So I began looking at materials that would further the concept of gallery floor as land, sea, etc.

Can you talk a little about your interest in high and low art when it comes to the work that you do?
I’m interested in art generally, be it a historical artifact in a museum or a handcrafted object at the Hmong Market in St. Paul. I can’t help approaching art from a loose, theoretical perspective that is colored by my academic training. But this training has, I would say, involved studio practice more than philosophy or discourse on the socio-cultural function, positioning, or parsing of art. The act of creating work is, for me, an immediately playful and experiential process that connects multiple popular approaches to art making. So, to some extent the assignment of cultural caché to work, both as process and product, is necessarily limiting.

How exactly would you like your work to be perceived? Is it more important for you to be understood as an artist, or is the effect your work has on a viewer of greater value?
Ultimately, the work should exist outside of my studio. That’s key. The viewer completes the work by interacting with it spatially, intellectually - opening the possibility of a conversation that expands upon the work. Getting it out there helps clear the workspace for other projects, certainly, but it also lifts my mental and spiritual preoccupation with it.

How often do you sculpt? Do you have a method or creative process that works best for you?
I teach sculpture at St. Cloud State University so conceptualizing and making sculpture is something that’s always present in my life. As far as my own work, I employ the process that best suits my concept. Sometimes this means I make a photograph, sometimes a sculpture. Sometimes I paint or build a pedestal. What works best is something I try not to impose, but find with each piece. Lately gravity has played a significant role: the lightness of thin metal rods, the viscosity of wax at different temperatures, it’s slumping effect when massed in a certain way, the sheer weight of bronze.

You have exhibited nationally and internationally…how much of what you currently produce is influenced by those trips?
Naturally it’s all shaped by where I’ve been and where I am – how much is impossible to say because it isn’t a conscious thing. New experiences naturally trigger new ideas, but once they’re brought into the studio it’s difficult to identify them by geographic origin. The photograph on the invitation to Cloud Cave I took during a trip to the Peloponnese region of Greece, so that’s easy to pinpoint. What’s useful to me about a new experience is how it fits into something familiar, in my basement or backyard.

What can viewers expect from your exhibit at the Burnet Gallery?
They’ll encounter sculptures and photographs suggestive of 15th and 16th century explorers, maps, cave formations and other objects from nature. Proxemics, as it relates to people and installation strategies, is also a principal feature.