VISUAL ARTS

Using materials such as pure pigment, gold, and glass and images inspired by nature and literature, Horn’s often gorgeous works explore notions of identity, perception, and place.

The most comprehensive survey of the American artist’s work to date, Roni Horn aka Roni Horn presents three decades of Horn’s art, including sculptures, photographs, collaged drawings, artist books, sound works, and installations. For the first time, a major exhibition will feature works in the museum’s lobby: the five-ton glass sculpture Pink Tons and a.k.a., a series of paired self-portraits.

The diversity of Horn's works reflects her ongoing exploration of how one's identity and memory can be as changeable and fleeting as flowing water, weather, and time. Many works are composed of pairs, multi-sided parts, or series that invite comparison between their elements.

You are the Weather, an installation of 100 photographs, shows the face of a beautiful woman immersed in hot pools around Iceland. The viewer becomes the center of the piece—the focus of the woman’s gaze as she responds to the changing conditions around her.

Poetry and language are major influences on Horn’s drawing and sculpture as well. In the rubber floor installation Rings of Lispector (Agua Viva), viewers find themselves walking on sentences by legendary Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, while the White Dickinson series of sculptures make solid the words of poet Emily Dickinson. In works on paper like Through V, Horn splices together collaged elements by matching pairs of words.

Horn’s work prompts us to consider the ways we see and understand our personal experience and memory, the passage of time, and the changing conditions around us. Never fixed or constant, “the true genius of Horn’s work is that it pins down flow and change itself.” (Washington Post)

Roni Horn aka Roni Horn is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in association with Tate Modern, London.

Support for this exhibition is provided by Hauser and Wirth Gallery and Jacqueline Bernat and Adam Hetnarski.