The FieldVladimir Novak (HR)

2026, spatial multichannel sound installation; 0.5 mm x variable lengths and number of sculptural elements, stainless steel, piezo contact microphones, DI boxes, audio interface, multichannel speaker system

The Field is a spatial sound installation composed of numerous thin stainless-steel wires that form an almost invisible field within the exhibition space. Their presence remains at the threshold of perception. Rather than asserting itself as a stable object, the work exists as a latent presence, revealed only through movement, the possibility of touch, and accidental encounters. What initially appears to be an empty space, gradually emerges as a sensitive network of tension, obstacles, and vibrations.

The work questions the notion of sculpture as a solid, self-contained, and visually defined form. Instead of presenting an object to be observed from the outside, The Field creates a situation in which sculpturality emerges through the relationship between the body, space, matter, and the invisible forces that connect them. Materiality is reduced to a minimum, yet it is precisely through this reduction that the work raises the question of its limits: how little material is enough for a space to become physically, psychologically, and affectively present?

Each wire functions as a sensitive transmitter of touch and micro-movements. Even the slightest contact generates vibrations that are amplified by contact microphones and projected into the space as sound. What would ordinarily remain imperceptible or insignificant in everyday experience is transformed, through technological mediation, into an intense spatial event. Sound is therefore not an addition to the work, but the very means through which it manifests, expands, and becomes embodied.

A distinctive dimension of the installation is created by very low frequencies, including the infrasound spectrum, which shift the experience from the realm of hearing to that of bodily sensation, pressure, and resonance. The work is thus experienced not only through sight and hearing, but through the entire body, as an invisible alteration of space.

The Field is sustained by the tension between emptiness and its dissolution, between silence and the potential for noise, between stillness and activation. As visitors enter the field, they cease to be detached observers and become active participants who alter its sonic and spatial configuration. Sculpture is thus displaced from the visible object into an experience of presence—an event that arises through the interaction of perception, matter, space, and the body.

Project collaborator: Miodrag Gladović

Coproduced by: KONTEJNER

Vladimir Novak (HR)

Vladimir Novak bases his artistic practice on investigating the boundaries of sculpture as a medium through objects, light installations, and sound installations, with a particular emphasis on the poetics of space, medium specificity, and affective intensities. Through iterative working processes, he examines and dismantles the boundaries between media, exploring the relationships between the visible and the invisible, as well as the concepts of body and mass, object and installation, stillness and movement, and light and shadow. His recent minimalist and subtle interventions in gallery and public spaces emphasise the processual nature of artistic practice and the interconnectedness of the artwork with natural and urban rhythms. He is particularly interested in transformations from one medium to another, as well as in the physical and socio-ecological resonances of his works. Operating at the threshold of perceptibility, in the ambiguity between malfunction and artistic gesture, he challenges the viewer's perception, sense of time, and patience, questioning the boundary between aesthetic experience and the banality of everyday phenomena. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his artistic work.