Roni Horn

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Roni Horn
Born September 25, 1955
New York
Nationality American
Field Visual arts
Training Rhode Island School of Design,
Yale University

Roni Horn (born September 25, 1955[1]) is an American visual artist and writer. Horn's oeuvre, which spans almost four decades, encompasses sculpture, drawing, photography, language, and site-specific installation. The granddaughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants[2], she was born in New York and lives and works in New York. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University.

Contents

[edit] Art

Horn explores the mutable nature of art through sculptures, works on paper, photography, and books. She describes drawing as the key activity in all her work because drawing is about composing relationships. 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. She 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. She describes her artworks as site-dependent, expanding upon the idea of site-specificity associated with Minimalism. 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. Since her first encounter with the island as a young arts graduate visiting on a fellowship from Yale, Horn has returned to Iceland frequently over the years. Iceland has been muse and medium to Roni Horn.

[edit] Work

[edit] To Place

In an interview, Horn was quoted as saying that "the entrance to all my work... which is extremely important to me" is the ongoing series of books entitled To Place (1990-) concerning Iceland.[3] The books consider identity, site, and nature through photographs of landscapes, ice, rocks, swirling water, and people; most of the images are accompanied by descriptive, classificatory, or literary texts.

Reproducing 13 watercolour and graphite drawings, Bluff Life (1990) was produced in 1982 during a two month stay in a lighthouse off the southern coast of Iceland. The second book, Folds (1991), is a collection of photographs documenting extent sheepfolds; a unique indigenous structure found throughout the island. To Place: Verne’s Journey (1995), the fifth in the series, refers to the North Atlantic island where the book Journey to Center of The Earth (1864), by Jules Verne, began. Horn’s volume opens with a series of aerial geographic views of Iceland, continues with multiple images of the island’s geological formations, and concludes with images of crashing waves.[4] A photographic essay, the seventh volume Arctic Circles (1998) records the endless horizon of the North Sea, the feathers of an eider nest, and the rotating beacon of a lighthouse, invoking in form the very circumference of Iceland. Doubt Box (Book IX) (2006) is a collection of cards rather than a bound volume. Printed on both sides, the cards show pictures of glacial water, taxidermied birds, and of the same face, a little older.[5]

In 2004-2006 the books were selected as some of the most important photobooks in history.[6][7] A 2009 journal article stated that the nine To Place books "together constitute one of the most important groups of artists' books since Ed Ruscha's 1960s books and Bernd and Hilla Becher's publications on industrial architecture."[8] Other publications include Dictionary of Water, This is Me, This is You, Cabinet of, If on a Winter's Night, Her, Her, Her, & Her, Wonderwater (Alice Offshore), and Index Cixous, 2003 – 05.

[edit] Installations

Weather, inspired by her experiences on Iceland, has played an important role in Roni Horn's work. She has created several public artworks, including You Are the Weather—Munich (1996–97), a permanent installation for the Deutscher Wetterdienst bureau in Munich. Yous in You (1997), a rubber-tiled walkway in Basel’s east train station, mimics an unusual basalt formation of Iceland.[9] Some Thames (2000), a permanent installation at the University of Akureyri in Iceland, consists of 80 photographs of water dispersed throughout the university’s public spaces, echoing the ebb and flow of students and learning over time at the university. In 2007 she undertook Artangel’s first international commission, creating Vatnasafn / Library of Water, a long-term installation in the town of Stykkisholmur, Iceland. The installation is made up of water collected from Icelandic glaciers. “Weather,” observes Roni Horn, “is the key paradox of our time. Weather that is nice is often weather that is wrong. The nice is occurring in the immediate and individual, and the wrong is occurring systemwide.”[10] The "Library of Water" is housed in a former library building in the little town of Stykkisholmur on the west coast of Iceland. Roni Horn noticed the building during a trip through Iceland in the 1990s. It is located at the high point of the town, overlooking the harbour and the sea. The architecture is influenced by that of lighthouses. It was conceived by Horn in 2004 as a sculpture installation and a community center, offering both a space for quiet reflection and a room for meetings and gatherings.

[edit] Photo series

Horn's first photographic installation, You Are The Weather (1994-1996), a photographic cycle featuring 100 close-up shots of the same woman, Margret[11], in a variety of Icelandic geothermal pools, deals with the enigma of identity captured through a series of facial expressions dictated by imperceptible weather changes. Many of the images in You Are the Weather were published in one of the To Place volumes. You are the Weather, Part 2, follows the same form as ‘You are the Weather’ and features the same model, 15 years later.[12] The series Untitled (Isabelle Huppert) 2005, capture the iconic actress in many different moods and characters, a sustained paradox of fleeting expressions.[13] In each sequence, Huppert slips into one of the characters she portrayed on screen – Erika, Lena, Claire, Charlotte, Dominique, Jeanne, Mika, Isabelle, Marie, Emma, Beatrice and others – so that her face expresses a personality that does not exist in reality but only in the film.[14]

The gesture of doubling – as an aesthetic and conceptual strategy – has been a recurrent motif for Horn since 1980, a tool that invites careful scrutiny from the viewer. In 2008, Bird (1998–2007), the artist’s long-running photographic series of taxidermied Icelandic wildfowl were shown for the first time. Photographed at close range against white backgrounds (as though obeying the conventional format of studio portraiture) the birds are viewed from behind, their unique physiognomies and markings resulting in inscrutable shapes and patterns on the photographs’ surfaces. Despite the singular form of the title the birds in this series are all presented in pairs, images that are hung side by side one another highlighting the differences and similarities between the two.[15]

Installed on all four walls of the gallery to form a continuous horizon line, the 45 color images of Horn's installation Pi (1998) create a band of syncopated glimpses of another world. Identical in height, slightly varying in width (square, vertical rectangle, horizontal rectangle), evenly spaced and united by a certain blueness of tone, the photographs are portraits of a middle-aged man and woman; close-ups of stuffed animals and feather-strewn birds' nests; stills from Iceland's favorite television soap opera, The Guiding Light; and the beam of a lighthouse cutting through the night. There are also images of the interior of a plain house near the Arctic Circle; expanses of tundra, and of ground scattered with feathers in some instances and with stuffed dead birds in others. Finally, there are immense expanses of open edgeless sea, shown in different weather and at various times of day.[16] The pictures were taken over a six year period in Iceland.

[edit] Sculpture

Things That Happen Again: For a Here and a There (1986) was installed at the Chinati Foundation by Donald Judd and Roni Horn in 1989. The work consists of two identical truncated cones that are 35 inches long, tapering from a diameter of 17 inches to 12 inches. The pair is part of a 1988 suite consisting of four sets of paired, solid copper forms, each hand-lathed to duplicate mechanical identity. The entire suite is titled Things That Happen Again, and also includes Piece for Two Rooms, For a Here and a There, and For Things that are Near.[17]

In 1990 during Horn’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Félix González-Torres encountered her sculpture Forms from the Gold Field (1980–82), two pounds of pure gold compressed into a luminous rectangular mat.[18] In 1993, he made Untitled (Placebo-Landscape-for Roni). In response, Horn made a second gold field piece, Gold Mats, Paired-For Ross and Felix (1994-1995), dedicated to dedicated to the late González-Torres and his partner Ross Laycock.[19]

Horn's 1993 series When Dickinson shut her eyes comprises eight square aluminium poles of different lengths leaning casually against the gallery wall, each bearing a line from Emily Dickinson's poem A Wind that rose; following in the conceptual tradition started by Joseph Kosuth and Lawrence Weiner, Horn's homage to Dickinson investigates the possibilities of language as sculptural form.[20] Other works in her series White Dickinson include sentences from the published letters of Dickinson.[21]

[edit] Drawings

While at Yale, Horn also began her drawing practice, which she describes as “absolutely essential to me, although not to my viewer. My drawing was always about my relationship to it, not the audience’s.”[22] Produced from the 1980s onwards, her drawings are collage-like blots of pigment applied to sometimes torn and (once again) diagrammatically pieced-together sheets of paper.[23] Small markings – words and numbers – track the work’s progression built up with the recomposing of the image. In the 1990s, Horn's drawings grew in scale.[24]

[edit] Career

Horn quit high school a year early at 16 and enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design.[25] Since 1975 Horn has traveled often to Iceland, whose landscape and isolation have strongly influenced her practice. Her first solo exhibition (outside the university) was held in 1980 at the Kunstraum München.[9] With two New York shows at the Paula Cooper and Leo Castelli galleries, Horn's career accelerated in the late 1980s.[26] Horn received the CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts in 1998, several NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim fellowship. She has had one-person exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago (2004); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2003); Dia Center for the Arts, New York, and Museu Serralves, Porto (2001); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kunsthalle Basel (1995); Rencontres d'Arle s festival, France (2009) and Tate Modern, London (2009).[27] Group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial (1991, 2004); Documenta (1992); and Venice Biennale (1997), among others[28] In 2004 she was a visiting critic at Columbia University.

In November 2009, the Whitney Museum of American Art opened a survey show of Horn’s work.[29] Titled "Roni Horn aka Roni Horn", the show travelled to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (2010)[30], the Tate Modern, London (25 February - 25 May 2009), and the Collection Lambert in Avignon (21 June - 4 October 2009).

Horn is represented by Hauser & Wirth, Zürich/London; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; and Kukje Gallery, Seoul.

[edit] Collections

Roni Horn’s works can be found in the collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, and the Kunstmuseum in Basel.[31]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books by Horn

  • Horn, Roni. Bluff Life. (To Place, book I.) New York: Peter Blum, 1990. ISBN 0935875093
  • Horn, Roni. Folds. (To Place, book II.) New York: Mary Boone Gallery, 1991. ISBN 0941863212
  • Horn, Roni. Lava. (To Place, book III.) New York: Roni Horn, 1992. ISBN 1564660354
  • Horn, Roni. Pooling waters. (To Place, book IV.) Cologne: Walther König, 1994. ISBN 3883751871
  • Horn, Roni. Inner geography. (To Place, supplement.) Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1994. ISBN 0912298677
  • Horn, Roni. Verne's journey. (To Place, book V.) Cologne: Walther König, 1995. ISBN 3883752193
  • Horn, Roni. Haraldsdóttir. (To Place, book VI.) Denver, CO: Ginny Williams, 1996. ISBN 1880146169
  • Horn, Roni. You are the weather. Zurich and New York: Scalo in collaboration with Fotomuseum Winterthur, 1997. ISBN 3931141454
  • Horn, Roni. Arctic circles. (To Place, book VII.) Denver, CO: Ginny Williams, 1998. ISBN 1880146215
  • Horn, Roni, Kathleen Merrill Campagnolo, and Jan Avgikos. Still water. Santa Fe, NM: SITE Santa Fe, 2000. ISBN 0970077416
  • Horn, Roni. Another water (the River Thames, for example). Zurich and New York: Scalo, 2000. ISBN 390824725X
  • Horn, Roni. Becoming a landscape. (To Place, book VIII.) Denver, CO: Ginny Williams, 2001. ISBN 3882437979
  • Horn, Roni. Dictionary of water. Paris: Edition 7L, 2001. ISBN 3882437537
  • Horn, Roni. This is me, this is you. Paris: Edition 7L, 2002. ISBN 3882437987
  • Horn, Roni. Cabinet of. Göttingen/New York: Steidl/Dangin, 2003. ISBN 3882438649
  • Horn, Roni. Her, her, her & her. Göttingen/New York: Steidl/Dangin, 2004. ISBN 386521035X
  • Horn, Roni, Louise Bourgeois, Anne Carson, Hélène Cixous, and John Waters. Wonderwater (Alice Offshore). Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2004. ISBN 3865210058
  • Horn, Roni, and Hélène Cixous. Rings of Lispector (Agua Viva). London: Hauser & Wirth; Göttingen: Steidl, 2005. ISBN 3865211496
  • Horn, Roni. Index Cixous: cix pax. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2005. ISBN 3865211356
  • Horn, Roni. Doubt box. (To Place, book IX.) Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2006. ISBN 386521276X
  • Horn, Roni. Herðubreið at home: the Herðubreið paintings of Stefán V. Jónsson aka Stórval. Göttingen: Steidl, 2007. ISBN 9783865214577
  • Horn, Roni. Weather reports you. London: Artangel/Steidl, 2007. ISBN 9783865213884
  • Horn, Roni, and Philip Larratt-Smith. Bird. London: Hauser & Wirth; Göttingen: Steidl, 2008. ISBN 9783865216694

[edit] Selected exhibition catalogues and monographs

  • Roni Horn: Glyptothek München, Kunstforum München, Kunstraum München eV. München: Kunstraum München, 1983. ISBN 3923874383
  • Detroit Institute of Arts / Galerie Lelong. Roni Horn: pair objects I, II, III. Detroit/New York: Galerie Lelong, 1988. ISBN 2855871573
  • Roni Horn: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Los Angeles: The Museum, 1990. ISBN 0914357204
  • Kersting, Hannelore, and Rudolf Herman Fuchs. Things which happen again: Roni Horn. Mönchengladbach: Städtisches Museum Abteiberg; Münster: Westfälischer Kunstverein, 1991. ISBN 3924039070
  • Schwarz, Dieter. Rare spellings: selected drawings 1985-1992. Düsseldorf, Germany: Richter, 1992. ISBN 3928762095
  • Spector, Nancy. Roni Horn: including the installation Pair Field and selections from the work To Place. Tilburg, The Netherlands: De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Art, 1994. ISBN 9074529054
  • Kellein, Thomas, and Roni Horn. Making being here enough: installations from 1980 to 1995. Basel: Kunsthalle Basel; Hannover: Kestner-Gesellschaft, 1995. ISBN 379659901X
  • González-Torres, Félix, Roni Horn, and Ingvild Goetz. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn. München: Sammlung Goetz, 1995.
  • Tillman, Lynne. Gurgles, sucks, echoes. Cologne: Jablonka Galerie; New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 1995. ISBN 188014610X
  • Koepplin, Dieter. Roni Horn Zeichnungen = drawings. Ostfildern, Germany: Cantz, 1995. ISBN 3893227776
  • hooks, bell, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Judith Hoos Fox, Roni Horn, Amada Cruz, and Sarah J. Rogers. Earths grow thick. Columbus, Ohio: Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, 1996. ISBN 1881390128
  • Schulz-Hoffmann, Carla, and Andreas Strobl. Roni Horn, Pi. Munich: Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst; Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2000. ISBN 3775709126
  • Neri, Louise, Lynne Cooke, and Thierry de Duve. Roni Horn. London: Phaidon, 2000. ISBN 0714838659
  • Storsve, Jonas, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Claire Blanchon. Roni Horn: dessins = Roni Horn: drawings. Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2003. ISBN 2844262198
  • Roni Horn, Ann Veronica Janssens, Mike Kelley, Mike Nelson. San Francisco: California College of Arts and Crafts, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, 2003. ISBN 0972508015
  • Lingwood, James, and Frida Björk Ingvarsdóttir. Roni Horn. Some Thames/Haskólínn á Akureyri. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2003. ISBN 3882439645
  • Stahel, Urs, Élisabeth Lebovici, bell hooks, Thierry de Duve, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Barbara Kruger. If on a winter's night ... Roni Horn.... Göttingen: Steidl Verlag; Winterthur: Fotomuseum, 2003. ISBN 3882439114
  • Eskildsen, Ute. Roni Horn. To place: postcards from the first 8 books: 1990-2001. Göttingen: Steidl, 2004. ISBN 3865210422
  • Dean, Tacita, and Angela Vettese. Roni Horn: Angie and Emily Dickinson. Edinburgh: Royal Botanic Garden, 2006. ISBN 1872291201
  • Roni Horn: vatnasafn, library of water. London: Artangel, 2006.
  • Cixous, Hélène, and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. A kind of you: 6 portraits by Roni Horn. Göttingen: Steidl, 2007. ISBN 9783865215833
  • Roni Horn: my Oz. Reykjavik, Iceland: Listasafn Reykjavikur, 2007. ISBN 9979769300
  • De Salvo, Donna, Carter E. Foster, Mark Godfrey, and Roni Horn. Roni Horn aka Roni Horn. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; London: Tate Modern in association with Steidl, Göttingen, 2009. ISBN 9783865218315
  • Lingwood, James, Briony Fer, and Adrian Searle. Roni Horn: vatnasafn/library of water. London: Artangel; Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2009. ISBN 9783865219428
  • Mézil, Éric. Roni Horn. Paris: Éditions Phébus, 2009. ISBN 9782752904270

[edit] Documentaries on Horn

Roni Horn was one of the artists featured on PBS' Art:21 series of biographies of contemporary artists[28]

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/bio/?artist_name=Roni%20Horn&page=1&f=Name&cr=6
  2. ^ Julie L. Belcove (November 2009), Roni Horn W Magazine.
  3. ^ "Roni Horn" (interview with Claudia Spinelli). Journal of Contemporary Art, June 1995.
  4. ^ Elements and Unknowns, September 4 – November 23, 2008 MoMA, New York.
  5. ^ Roni Horn aka Roni Horn, 25 February – 25 May 2009 Tate Modern, London.
  6. ^ Roth, Andrew, editor. The Open Book: a History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present. Göteborg, Sweden: Hasselblad Center, 2004.
  7. ^ Parr, Martin, and Gerry Badger. The Photobook: a History. Volume II. London & New York: Phaidon, 2006. ISBN 0714844330
  8. ^ Godfrey, Mark. "Roni Horn's Icelandic Encyclopedia." Art History, volume 32, issue 5, December 2009, pages 932-953.
  9. ^ a b Roni Horn Guggenheim Collection.
  10. ^ Adrian Searle (May 13, 2007). Becoming the Weather. Modern Painters. http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/25053/becoming-the-weather/. Retrieved 2008-04-28 
  11. ^ Art21: Roni Horn PBS.
  12. ^ Roni Horn: Recent Work, 9 September – 22 October 2011 Hauser & Wirth, London
  13. ^ Roni Horn, July 24 - August 29, 2008 Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles.
  14. ^ Roni Horn, 20 May – 14 June 2008 Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
  15. ^ Roni Horn, 5 March – 12 April 2008 Hauser & Wirth, London.
  16. ^ Roberta Smith (May 07, 1999) Art in review: Roni Horn New York Times.
  17. ^ Roni Horn Chinati Foundation, Marfa.
  18. ^ Paired, Gold: Félix González-Torres and Roni Horn, October 2, 2009–January 6, 2010 Guggenheim Museum, New York.
  19. ^ Félix González-Torres and Roni Horn, March 31 - April 30, 2005 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York.
  20. ^ Roni Horn, When Dickinson Shut Her Eyes, no. 1259, 1993-2004 Phillips de Pury & Company, London.
  21. ^ Louise Bourgeois, Roni Horn, 3 June – 22 July 2006 Hauser & Wirth, Zürich.
  22. ^ Julie L. Belcove (November 2009), Roni Horn W Magazine.
  23. ^ Kari Rittenbach (May 5, 2009), You Are the Weather: Roni Horn aka Roni Horn Art in America Magazine.
  24. ^ Roni Horn aka Roni Horn, 25 February – 25 May 2009 Tate Modern, London.
  25. ^ Roberta Smith (November 5, 2009), Gaining a Voice and an Identity in Minimalism New York Times.
  26. ^ William Wilson (April 22, 1990), Roni Horn and the Art of Abstraction Los Angeles Times
  27. ^ "Roni Horn aka Roni Horn". tate.org. 2009-01-21. http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/ronihorn/about.shtm. Retrieved 2009-04-13. 
  28. ^ a b PBS.
  29. ^ Orden, Erica. “Snapshot of a Song” Modern Painters, November 2009.
  30. ^ http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/
  31. ^ Roni Horn, August 31, 2010 - October 3, 2010 Kukje Gallery, Seoul.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roni_Horn&oldid=466830445"
Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
Navigation
Interaction
Toolbox
Print/export
Languages