![]() No mammals that could hurt you, either… Essentially there is no violence. Witness this excerpt from “The Cold Blood of Iceland”, 1990-91, included in Island Zombie: Iceland Writings, published in 2020. Solitude is great terrain for the imagination.” Roni Horn, Dead Owl, 1997 (Photo: Francois Deladerrière) It is something I seek out, and have sought throughout my life. ![]() Solitude is an experience – one that can challenge and enlighten. Loneliness is a place of longing, of discomfort in being alone. “Solitude is often mistaken for loneliness. Horn’s artistic life has been influenced by Iceland, which she first visited in 1975, before making a serious trip four years later and the force of the place “taking possession” of her thereafter. In fact, to be in the presence of Horn’s work – Portrait of an image (with Isabelle Huppert), 2005-06, fifty close-up photographs of French actress Isabelle Huppert recreating roles she played in her films Still Water (The River Thames, for Example), 1999, footnoted photographs of the water of The Thames in London and Gold Mats, Paired – for Ross and Felix, 1994/2021, two sheets of pure gold foil emitting a luminous life-force from within – is like standing at the edge of infinity, where everything begins but has no end. I keep going into paradox as a source of truth, or experiential truth.” Roni Horn, Or 7, 2013/2015 (Photo: Tom Powell) And there’s all these balls in the air at the same time. I’m not really giving you any final position in the work. “There is so much paradox in there, and I dive into a paradox and never really come out. “I often don’t know what I’m getting into,” she matter-of-facts with a smile. ![]() The American artist David Salle once told us of his painting process: “I have to get lost so I can invent some way out.” And so it feels with Horn, where nothing is ever resolved or adds up. Rocha described Horn as being “so playful – she takes it to a tongue-in-cheek place.” Visitors to HEM will note that spirit in works such as Dead Owl, 1997, a pair of photographs of a stuffed snowy owl framed separately – gives viewers a sense of deja vu. Up until October last year, she was also part of the Simone Rocha-curated “girls girls girls” group show at Lismore Castle, County Waterford, Ireland, historic home of the Duke of Devonshire’s family, along with Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois and Lu Yang, where Horn’s Untitled (Weather), 2010-11, was on view opposite Sherman’s bus-stop portraits. Horn currently has several global solo art shows on view – at the Winsing Art Place, Taipei Hauser & Wirth, Zurich Centro Botín, Santander and the just-opening He Art Museum (HEM), Shunde, China. And she’s captivated by weather and water and words. She uses a variety of forms and materials – rubber, glass, and gold, photography, drawing, and writing, to name a few. “Now that I’m at the age I am, I have a history, and that history makes me perhaps more clear, more visible, right? But up until recently, that clarity was not perceptible for a lot of people.” Roni Horn does big-picture paradox-related work about meaning, perception, ambiguity, issues of pairing and doubling, de-centering, de-linearising, and has a long-standing interest in the protean nature of identity. You know, it’s a funny thing,” remarks trailblazing 67-year-old American artist Roni Horn at the conclusion of our 58-minute Zoom chat in late May. Stand at the edge of infinity and let go. Roni Horn debuts her art on the mainland of China at HEM.
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