PRESENTATION: Roni Horn

For more than 30 years, Roni Horn has been developing work of concentrated visual power and intellectual rigor, often exploring issues of gender, identity, androgyny, and the complex relationship between object and subject. Because Roni Horn chooses not to privilege any one medium, Horn’s art defies easy categorization. Materials take on metaphorical qualities and relate key themes with great visual power.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Gallery Archive

Roni Horn in her solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in New York presents 4 new bodies of works: the photographic opus “The Selected Gifts” (1974-2015), two series of works on paper  “The Dog’s Chorus” (2016) and “Th Rose Prblm” (2015), as the sculptures “Water Double, v. 1” and “Water Double, v. 3” (both 2013-15). “The Selected Gifts” (1974 -2015)’, is a collection of 67 photographs documenting the history of gifts the artist received over a period of 41 years. A fossilized dinosaur egg, leather gloves, two copies of Djuna Barnes’ “The Book of Repulsive Women”, and a handmade olive tree are but a few of the objects that appear in the photos, the majority of which are reproduced at actual size. In  “The Dog’s Chorus” the artist begins with an arguably destructive act, Horn uses a Stanley knife to slice up an original drawing  then she reassembles the fragments into something new, creating pulsating grounds that appear tangled.  Following a similar approach for “Th Rose Prblm”, Horn cuts together two well-worn phrases: “Rose is a rose is a rose” or “a rose is a rose is a rose”, with “come up smelling like roses” or “coming up smelling like a rose”. Horn further sharpens her conceptual approach to language here, splicing these expressions together in all their possible iterations.  The exhibition concludes with two of the largest Horn has ever produced, “Water Double, v. 1” and “Water Double, v. 3”. While these hulking cylinders appear to be adamantly solid forms, they are actually in imperceptible motion. Glass is neither liquid nor solid, but an amorphous liquid solid that exists between those two states of matter, with atoms moving too slowly for its condition of constant change to be visible.

Info: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, 548 West 22nd Street, New York, Duration 27/4-29/7/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.hauserwirth.com