PRESENTATION: Roni Horn-I Am Paralyzed With Hope
Since 1975, Horn has travelled extensively across Iceland’s remote landscapes – these solitary experiences in a geologically young landscape have long been important influences in her life and practice. Her works follow the mutability of water, weather and landscape, counteracting the possibility of fixed states and stability, existing in an androgynous realm. Although Horn´s work is not directly addressing identity politics or the climate emergency, it is evident that these urgent debates infused her quietly radical oeuvre. Her intellectually rigorous and emotionally profound work reflects on the processes of becoming in relation to identity and location.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Centro Botín Archive
As well as showcasing key artworks spanning 30 years of the Roni Horn’s practice, the exhibition “I am paralyzed with hope”, premiere 10s of her iconic glass works and be the first institutional presentation of her “LOG” series. Artworks include conceptually oriented photography, sculpture, drawing and performance. The title of the exhibition, “I am paralyzed with hope”, is a motif in one of Horn’s recent works which is borrowed from a sketch by comedian Maria Bamford, which Horn found on YouTube. Entering the exhibition, visitors walk through a room lined with “a.k.a” (2008-9), a photographic series featuring 15 pairs of images of the artist taken from personal and family archives speaking to the multitude in each of us and the ambivalence of the self. The exhibition continues towards the north facing floor-to-ceiling windows of Centro Botin which oversees the city of Santander. Here visitors find “Still Water (The River Thames, for Example)” (1999), a series of 15 large photolithographs focusing on the section of the river Thames that flows through London. The work includes annotations by Horn with anecdotes, facts, quotes, empirical observations, and personal thoughts connected to the London river, including cases of suicide taken from press clippings, police reports and eyewitness accounts. It conjures reflections on the indivisible link that exists across bodies of water and the continuity that persists between life and death. The room also exhibits “Gold Mats, Paired (For Ross and Felix)” (1994/2003) on the gallery floor, a sculpture composed of two rectangular sheets of pure, annealed gold. It is dedicated to her late and dear friend artist Felix Gonzalez Torres and his lover Ross Laycock and introduces states of love, mourning and friendship. The exhibition continues with “This Is Me, This Is You” (1997-2000), comprised of two grids of 48 photographs of Horn’s niece taken over a period of three years and presented on opposite walls, and “Portrait of an Image (with Isabelle Huppert)” (2005-6), a grid of 100 portraits of the actress re-enacting the personalities of her fictional characters. Midway through the exhibition, visitors find “Th Rose Prblm” (2015), a body of work made up of 48 different drawings featuring iterations of two phrases – “a rose is a rose is a rose” from Gertrude Stein’s poem “Sacred Emily “(1913) and the idiom “come up smelling like roses” – hand drawn, cut and interspliced through each other into all possible outcomes. Horn’s conceptual approach to language makes sense from nonsense to draw a metaphor on the changeable nature of identity. The exhibition’s journey concludes with Horn’s most recent works, including the first institutional presentation of “LOG (March 22, 2019–May 17, 2020)” (2019-2020). The series features 406 sheets of drawn paper that function as a record of daily observations and events that have informed the artist’s sensibility and voice. The penultimate room presents “Saying Water” (2001), a 40-minute monologue based on Horn’s own musings and associations with water. And finally, in the room with floor-to-ceiling windows that open the space onto the water, visitors find Horn’s latest distinguishing cast glass sculptures “Untitled (“The tiniest piece of mirror is always the whole mirror”)” (2022). Cylindrical with a smooth reflective concave top, each sculpture behaves as an eye to its surrounding environment. Horn works with the tension of glass’ materiality, which is neither solid nor liquid. Its atoms are in perpetual imperceptible motion. Horn applies this innate duality to explore states of water, interrogating identity, meaning and perception.
Photo: Roni Horn, I Am Paralyzed With Hope, Exhibition view, Centro Botin- Santander, 2023, Courtesy Centro Botin
Info: Curator: Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, Centro Botin, Albareda Dock no/d, Jardines de Pereda, Santander, Spain, Duration: 1/4-1/9/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-14:00 & 16:00-20:00, Sat-sun 10:00-20:00, www.centrobotin.org/
