Roni Horn

27 November 2018 - 2 March 2019

Hong Kong

Hauser & Wirth is pleased to present a survey exhibition by acclaimed American artist Roni Horn at its Hong Kong space in the H Queen’s building. Intended as a comprehensive introduction to Horn’s multidisciplinary practice, the exhibition brings together works on paper, photography, installation and sculpture. The selection comprises over 30 works created between 1983 and 2018, chosen and curated by the artist. Opening on 27 November 2018 and on view through 2 March 2019, this is Horn’s first solo exhibition in Greater China. Horn’s work assumes various guises to generate uncertainty and thwart closure, in pursuit her longstanding interest in the fluctuating nature of identity, meaning, and perception, as well as the notion of doubling. These issues continue to propel Horn’s practice, regardless of medium, and constitute the thematic underpinning to this show.Entering the gallery on the 16th floor, visitors are confronted with a blue glass sculpture, ‘Untitled (“There is perfect conviction in everything, as if the objects were better informed about themselves and the position they took up in the world. Here you don’t wonder. You don’t have a hunch. You know.”)’. For this exhibition, the gallery’s floor-length windows have been revealed to allow the weather and sunlight to fully interact with and activate the works on view. Light becomes an element of the exhibition and engages directly with the theme of mutability. It causes the sculpture’s appearance to subtly change throughout the day, adjusting its color, weight, and perceived solidity. Just as light affects our visual perception, it also alters the emotion of the viewer, so that the natural light causes nuanced reactions to the same work. The seductively glossy surface of the glass sculpture invites the viewer to gaze into the optically pristine interior, as if looking down on a body of water through an aqueous oculus. The changing appearance of Horn’s sculptures is where one discovers meaning and connects her work to the concept of identity and the fragility of its construct. For these works, colored molten glass assumes the shape and qualities of a mold as it gradually anneals over the course of months. The sides and bottom are left with the rough translucent impression of the mold in which it was cast in stark contrast to the smooth top surface. Balanced against the surrounding walls are a number of sculptures from Horn’s ‘Key and Cue’ and ‘White Dickinson’ series, which employ text as image drawn from various sources including poetry, letters, and even fragments from other languages. Horn renders text as images, encouraging us to think about language as sculpture, and hence removed from its meaning. As Horn said, ‘I don’t think of the object, the material thing or what is produced as the endpoint of a work. The aspiration is always the experience, which means the audience, the individual, is integral to the value of the work.’ Moving through the gallery to the 15th floor, viewers encounter another pair of blue square glass sculptures – ‘Untitled (“Sometimes I think I resemble myself too much. I have always been someone else…”)’, as well as photographic diptychs, which directly engage with the gesture of doubling, an aesthetic and conceptual strategy that has been a recurrent motif for Horn since 1980. Doubling is a tool that invites careful scrutiny from the viewer, altering the dynamic of the work. She has noted that, ‘with two objects that are one object you have an integral use of the world. You have the necessary inclusion of circumstance.’ Roni Horn began to make her pigment drawings in the early 1980s and continues to make them today. The pigment is applied to the paper in thick layers, then mixed with small amounts of turpentine, and varnish, added a little at a time. It is a laborious process that lends physicality and depth to the two-dimensional works. The Hack Wit drawings employ a reconstructive method – Horn begins with two drawings, or ‘plates’, which she cuts into pieces then reassembles into new, tessellating forms. Through this process, the original drawings are fused into a single mutated composition. The subject matter is grounded in language and linguistic play: Horn reconfigures idiomatic turns of phrase and proverbs to engender nonsensical, jumbled expressions that thwart expectation. The themes of pairing and mirroring emerge as Horn intertwines not only the phrases themselves but also the paper they are inscribed on, so that her process reflects the content of the drawings.

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About the Artist

Roni Horn

Roni Horn’s work consistently generates uncertainty to thwart closure in her work. Important across her oeuvre is her longstanding interest to the protean nature of identity, meaning, and perception, as well as the notion of doubling; issues which continue to propel Horn’s practice.

Since the mid-1990s, Horn has been producing cast-glass sculptures. For these works, colored molten glass assumes the shape and qualities of a mold as it gradually anneals over several months. The sides and bottom of the resulting sculpture are left with the rough translucent impression of the mold in which it was cast. By stark contrast, the top surface is fire-polished and slightly bows like liquid under tension. The seductively glossy surface invites the viewer to gaze into the optically pristine interior of the sculpture, as if looking down on a body of water through an aqueous oculus. Exposed to the reflections from the sun or to the shadows of an overcast day, Horn’s glass sculpture relies upon natural elements like the weather to manifest her binary experimentations in color, weight and lightness, solidity and fluidity. The endless subtle shifts in the work’s appearance place it in an eternal state of mutability, as it refuses a fixed visual identity. Begetting solidity and singularity, the changing appearance of her sculptures is where one discovers meaning and connects her work to the concept of identity.

For Horn, drawing is a primary activity that underpins her wider practice. Her intricate works on paper examine recurring themes of interpretation, mirroring and textual play, which coalesce to explore the materiality of color and the sculptural potential of drawing. Horn’s preoccupation with language also permeates these works; her scattered words read as a stream of consciousness spiralling across the paper. In her ‘Hack Wit’ series, Horn reconfigures idiomatic turns of phrase and proverbs to engender nonsensical, jumbled expressions. The themes of pairing and mirroring emerge as she intertwines not only the phrases themselves but also the paper they are inscribed on, so that her process reflects the content of the drawings. Words are her images and she paints them expressionistically, which—combined with her method—causes letters to appear indeterminate, as if they are being viewed underwater.

Notions of identity and mutability are also explored within Horn’s photography, which tends to consist of multiple pieces and installed as a surround which unfolds within the gallery space. Examples include her series ‘The Selected Gifts, (1974 - 2015),’ photographed with a deceptively affectless approach that belies sentimental value. Here, Horn’s collected treasures float against pristine white backdrops in the artist’s signature serial style, telling a story of the self as mediated through both objects and others—what the artist calls ‘a vicarious self-portrait.’ This series, alongside her other photographic projects, build upon her explorations into the effects of multiplicity on perception and memory, and the implications of repetition and doubling, which remain central to her work.

Current Exhibitions