PRESENTATION: Roni Horn-A Rat Surrendered Here
Roni Horn’s oeuvre, which spans almost four decades, explores the mutable nature of art through sculptures, works on paper, photography, and books. Horn’s drawings concentrate on the materiality of the objects depicted. She also uses words as the basis for drawings and other works. Horn crafts complex relationships between the viewer and her work by installing a single piece on opposing walls, in adjoining rooms, or throughout a series of buildings.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Château La Coste Archive
Roni Horn subverts the notion of ‘identical experience’, insisting that one’s sense of self is marked by a place in the here-and-there, and by time in the now-and-then. Horn’s work also embodies the cyclical relationship between humankind and nature—a mirror-like relationship in which we attempt to remake nature in our own image. For the past 30 years, the work of Roni Horn has been intimately involved with the singular geography, geology, climate and culture of Iceland. Roni Horn in her solo exhibition “A Rat Surrendered Here” deals with the theme of death/ The exhibition is featuring a 10-ton glass installation, “Water Double, v. 4”, shown for the very first time, together with sculptures, photos and drawings by the artist. The title of the exhibition is taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson, which Horn incorporated into an aluminium sculpture in her “Key and Cue” series. The exhibition includes also the 1999 photographic installation “Still Water (The River Thames, for Example”. Each of the 15 photographs that comprise this work depict the surface of the river Thames, showing the water’s varying colors and textures. Close inspection reveals that the photograph is annotated with numbers which correspond to the footnotes printed at the bottom of each plate.
Since the mid-1990s, Roni Horn has been producing cast-glass sculptures. For these works, colored molten glass assumes the shape and qualities of a mold as it gradually anneals over three to four months. The sides and bottom of the resulting sculpture are left with the rough translucent impression of the mold in which it was cast. By stark contrast, the top surface is fire-polished and slightly bows like liquid under tension. The seductively glossy surface invites the viewer to gaze into the optically pristine interior of the sculpture, as if looking down on a body of water through an aqueous oculus. Exposed to the reflections from the sun or to the shadows of an overcast day, Horn’s glass sculpture relies upon natural elements like the weather to manifest her binary experimentations in color, weight and lightness, solidity and fluidity. The endless subtle shifts in the work’s appearance place it in an eternal state of mutability, as it refuses a fixed visual identity. Begetting solidity and singularity, the changing appearance of her sculptures is where one discovers meaning and connects her work to the concept of identity.
For Horn, drawing is a primary activity that underpins her wider practice. Her intricate works on paper examine recurring themes of interpretation, mirroring and textual play, which coalesce to explore the materiality of color and the sculptural potential of drawing. Horn’s preoccupation with language also permeates these works; her scattered words read as a stream of consciousness spiralling across the paper. In her ‘Hack Wit’ series, Horn reconfigures idiomatic turns of phrase and proverbs to engender nonsensical, jumbled expressions. The themes of pairing and mirroring emerge as she intertwines not only the phrases themselves but also the paper they are inscribed on, so that her process reflects the content of the drawings. Words are her images and she paints them expressionistically, which – combined with her method – causes letters to appear indeterminate, as if they are being viewed underwater. Notions of identity and mutability are also explored within Horn’s photography, which tends to consist of multiple pieces and installed as a surround which unfolds within the gallery space. Examples include her series “The Selected Gifts” (1974 – 2015),’ photographed with a deceptively affectless approach that belies sentimental value. Here, Horn’s collected treasures float against pristine white backdrops in the artist’s signature serial style, telling a story of the self as mediated through both objects and others – what the artist calls ‘a vicarious self-portrait.’ This series, alongside her other photographic projects, build upon her explorations into the effects of multiplicity on perception and memory, and the implications of repetition and doubling, which remain central to her work.
Photo: Roni Horn, Still Water (The River Thames, for Example). 1999. 15 offset lithographs on uncoated paper, © Roni Horn, Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Château La Coste
Info: Château La Coste, 2750 Route De La Cride, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France, Duration: 1/7-24/10/2021, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00, https://chateau-la-coste.com
