Films
Garden of Paradox
The nature of Roni Horn’s work
On the occasion of “Roni Horn,” the artist’s first solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Menorca, Ursula presents a conversation between Horn and researcher Isabel de Naverán about some of the ideas and inspirations that have underpinned Horn’s work, among them the literature of Emily Dickinson, Flannery O’Connor and Jorge Luis Borges; the dualities of isolation and presence (of “being where you are when you’re there”); and the relationship between chemical and material realities.
“There’s only a limited amount of activity in my artistic life that’s visual, purely visual. Otherwise there’s this other level of interaction that creates networks of flow, that I feel more at home in.”—Roni Horn
Roni Horn No. 3, New York, 2011. Photo: Juergen Teller
“Roni Horn,” installation view, Hauser & Wirth Menorca, 2024. Photo: Stefan Altenburger
“To be more ‘nature’ is to add to the world in a way that doesn’t deprive it of anything, that doesn’t take something away. Most forms of production are not much more than consumption, in the end. But here in art… you get to produce something, potentially, that transcends the consumption level. That’s how I mean, ‘nature.’”—Horn
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Roni Horn’s work consistently questions and generates uncertainty to thwart closure in her work, engaging with many different concerns in a range of materials, including photography, installation, sculpture and literature. 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.
Isabel de Naverán is a writer and researcher based in Bilbao, the Basque Country. She holds a PhD in Art and is currently a collaborator at the Open University of Catalonia and a guest lecturer on several postgraduate study programs. She frequently publishes essays in specialist books and magazines, and is involved in an ongoing conversation with the work of Roni Horn, with whom she led the workshop Being Where You Are When You Are There at Centro Botín, Santander (2023). Fruit of this ongoing research, she published the essays The Sun Produces a Golden Light (Centro Botín, 2023) and A Companion Solitude: Roni Horn, Emily Dickinson, Federico García Lorca (Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2024). Between 2017 and 2023 she worked as a curator of dance and performance at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. As a writer, she has published the books Wrap, History and Syncope (2021), Ritual de duelo (2022) and La ola en la mente (2024).
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“Roni Horn” opened May 11 and continues through October 27 at Hauser & Wirth Menorca, Spain.