Skip to navigation Skip to main content

St-Georges

Roni Horn

Roni Horn
Selected works Installation views

Roni Horn (°1955, New York) explores the mutable nature of art through sculptures, works on paper, photography, and books. 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.

For her third solo exhibition at the gallery, Horn has selected two sculptures in glass, the photographic series “Portrait of an Image” and a selection of ‘White Dickinson’-sculptures.

‘Opposite of White – v.1’ and ‘Opposite of White – v.2’ are two circular, almost identical, white- and blackcoloured glass blocks of 142 cm diameter and 51 cm high that each weigh more than 2000 kgs. While their frosted sides, still slightly gritty, bear the minute imperfection with which they have emerged from the moulds, their tops are polished to a perfect, limpid gloss. Despite their massive forms and their interiors that can only be intuited, the blocks continuously interact with their environment. Circumstantial differences like the changes of light and weather, the varying experiences by the individual visitors inscribe the sculptures with a fundamental sense of motility. By installing both sculptures in separate exhibition rooms, Horn crafts a complex relationship between the sculptures as well as between the viewer and the work. The sculptures further denote Horn’s preoccupation with pairs as a favoured format.

‘Portrait of an Image (with Isabelle Huppert)’ is a series of 50 photographic portraits of French actress Isabelle Huppert. The series introduces a new description of the “paradox of an actor” within the oeuvre of Roni Horn that already involves a continuous play of identities, allusions and inflections. Horn photographed the actress Huppert in several sequences of five photos each. In each sequence, Isabelle 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 exists in reality but only in the film. To do so, however, Huppert had been constrained, not to assume a variety of aspects of the character but to concentrate on her muscular memory and revisit the physical reflexes of each persona as might an athlete or a musician.

The ‘White Dickinson’ sculptures are aluminium bars that carry white sentences within from the published letters by Emily Dickinson. They express the admiration the artist has for the writings of the American poet. The texts include WE WENT TO SLEEP AS THOUGH IT WERE A COUNTRY ; TO COWER BEFORE A FLOWER IS PERHAPS UNWISE and FASCINATION IS PORTABLE.

Roni Horn lives and works in New York and Reykjavik. Since more than 20 years, her works have been included in several solo and group exhibitions in important museums and institutions worldwide. These include Reykjavik Art Museum in Reykjavik (2007), the Inverleith House in Edinburgh (2006), the Art Insitute of Chicago (2004), Fotomuseum Winterthur (2003), Centre Pompidou in Paris (2003), the Dia Center for the Arts (2001),…

Related exhibitions

Selected works

  • Portrait of an image (with Isabelle Huppert), 2004

  • Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

  • Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

  • Opposite of White, v. 2 (large) - A, 2006

  • Untitled (Isabelle Huppert ), 2004

  • Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

  • White Dickinson, WE WENT TO SLEEP AS THOUGH IT WERE A COUNTRY, 2006

  • White Dickinson, FASCINATION IS PORTABLE, 2006

  • Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

  • Opposite of White, v. 1 (large) - A, 2006

  • Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

  • Pair Object Vlr: For Two Locations in One Place, 1988

  • Untitled, No. 13, 1998/2006

Related artworks

    Roni Horn

    Portrait of an image (with Isabelle Huppert), 2004

    standard C print on Fuji Crystal Archive, mounted on 1/8" sintra
    28 x 34.3 cm, 11 x 13.5 in. each

    Roni Horn

    Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

    standard C print on Fuji Crystal Archive, mounted on 1/8" sintra
    27.9 x 34.3 cm, 11 x 13 1/2 in. each, mounted sequence of 5 images

    Roni Horn

    Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

    standard C print on Fuji Crystal Archive
    27.9 x 34.3 cm, 11 x 13 1/2 in. each, mounted sequence of 5 images

    Roni Horn

    Opposite of White, v. 2 (large) - A, 2006

    solid cast, colorless and black glass NG4, with as-cast surfaces on all sides (fire-polished top)
    diameter 142 cm x 51 cm, 56 x 20 in.

    Roni Horn

    Untitled (Isabelle Huppert ), 2004

    standard C print on Fuji Crystal Archive, mounted on 1/8" sintra
    27.9 x 34.3 cm, 11 x 13 1/2 in. each, mounted sequence of 5 images

    Roni Horn

    Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

    standard C print on Fuji Crystal Archive, mounted on 1/8" sintra
    27.9 x 34.3 cm, 11 x 13 1/2 in. each, mounted sequence of 5 images

    Roni Horn

    White Dickinson, WE WENT TO SLEEP AS THOUGH IT WERE A COUNTRY, 2006

    aluminium and solid cast white plastic
    5.1 x 5.1 x 214.6 cm, 2 x 2 x 84 1/2 in.

    Roni Horn

    White Dickinson, FASCINATION IS PORTABLE, 2006

    aluminium and solid cast white plastic
    5.1 x 5.1 x 111.7 cm, 2 x 2 x 44 in.

    Roni Horn

    Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

    standard C print on Fuji Crystal Archive
    27.9 x 34.3 cm, 11 x 13 1/2 in. each, mounted sequence of 5 images

    Roni Horn

    Opposite of White, v. 1 (large) - A, 2006

    solid cast, colorless and colorless glass (N-BK7), with as-cast surfaces on all sides (fire-polished top)
    diameter 142 cm x 51 cm, 56 x 20 in.

    Roni Horn

    Untitled (Isabelle Huppert), 2004

    standard C print on Fuji Crystal Archive, mounted on 1/8" sintra
    27.9 x 34.3 cm, 11 x 13 1/2 in. each, mounted sequence of 5 images

    Roni Horn

    Pair Object Vlr: For Two Locations in One Place, 1988

    solid forged and machined OFHC Copper (unique)
    two cone-shaped units: 33,2 x 50,8 cm, 13 x 20 in.

    Roni Horn

    Untitled, No. 13, 1998/2006

    pigment prints
    two units: 55.9 x 55.9 cm, 22 x 22 in. each

Installation views