HITA Exhibition in Serbia: The Tangent of a Room
We are very exited about and some of us were even traveling to Serbia for our exhibtion in Aranđelovac, Serbia:
The Tangent of a Room, Opening October 6th, 2026
with: Aleksandar Djordjevic, Saundra Fleming, Andrea Harborth, André Maleval, Tim Murphy
The Tangent of a Room
A tangent to a circle is a straight line that shares exactly one point with that circle (the point of tangency) and is perpendicular to the radius ending at that point. The word originates from the Latin tangere, meaning “to touch.”
A tangent can also be imaginarily positioned against the outer wall or the side of the room and space where I paint and create. In this case, too, it shares a single point of contact with the
What is the object leaning against the edge of the painter’s studio that touches this tangent? In this instance, it is a foam mattress. Out of allthe objects—both those placed deliberately withgreat care and those left freely without much thought—I choose this foam mattress.
The mattress is an object made of foam, and I know exactly how it arrived in my studio. Like many objects and smaller pieces of furniture, it
represents a negation of the human body. Wesleep on it, rest on it, but we also lie upon it in all kinds of psychophysical states of body and mind. Even if we didn’t know what it was, its dimensions and proportionswould tell us it was designed for the human form. We can stand next to it, set it upright, and it will act like a wall—yet a wall we cannot lean on, due to its soft surface. A voice or a word spoken near it is muffled. The silence becomes deeper. It implies that contact with it brings peace.
I wanted to alter the function of the foam mattress and transform it into a strict geometric form. I cut the entire mattress into a large number of foam cubes, placing each soft piece into a handmade cardboard box. Then I sealed them. I left small side slits on the boxes, through which you can see that the mattress is still breathing… I arranged these mattress, foam, and cardboard cubes in groups of ten, dividing them across three shelves of simple wooden cabinets.These shelves are positioned between the paintings and drawings hanging on the wall.
Thoughts and curation of the exhibition by Aleksandar Djordjevic
Also read the text from Lila Berne (curator of the series ‘No-paysages’ by André Maleval for his contribution to the exhibition)