Coeval Magazine

Joan Horrach trained as a dancer but thought like a visual artist. Born in Palma de Mallorca, he arrived at a London ballet school at thirteen and spent the following years studying choreography at university, all while his real references, Lawrence Weiner, Bruce Nauman, Cindy Sherman, accumulated in a separate register entirely. The gap between where he was and what he was looking at eventually became the work itself.

The shift was not so much a rupture as a reorientation. Meeting Marina Abramovic in New York gave him the vocabulary to understand that performance could live inside the art world, not adjacent to it. From that point, his work began to take its own shape: durational actions, installation, photography, video. The body remained central, but the choreographic logic extended outward, into space, architecture, sound, and the sociology of shared silence.

His recent installation at Spazio Serra, Distorted Scenarios, arrived after a period marked by surgical recovery and personal loss. Three meniscus operations kept him in hospital waiting rooms. In those months, waiting ceased to be passive and became a subject.

Joan Horrachjoan

Interview by Donald Gjoka