Self portrait of an artist

The Fondation Beyeler is holding an exhibition on Roni Horn, who conceived it as a self-portrait specifically for the Swiss museum’s spaces.

Roni Horn was born in New York in 1955. Active since the 1970s, she forms part of the generation of artists who embraced the conceptual methods and re-elaborated the effects of Minimalism, and who have manifested huge interest in identity and gender. These subjects are interpreted without any polarisation because the artist sees the subject as unique and different, subject to the diverse experiences, relationships and possibilities that arise before them – but constantly fluid, multiple and changing. Changing as moods do. Changing like water that can adopt any form without losing its true essence; and like glass, which absorbs light and seems different every time; and impossible to influence, like the weather.

With her subtle and rigorous but intimate work, Roni Horn addresses the subject of multiplicity and variability, the continuous metamorphosis of everything living and of the faceted and elusive nature of things, the essence of which does not correspond to a stable form but to a transient semblance – and this is how the artist wants her work to be: conveying a specific message but one variegated in form, material and language, and changing, destined to live differently in its surrounding spaces and in the gaze of different observers. Its spirit always emits the sense of a profound inner experience but this does not negate the political value of her work and the criticism of every set category is certainly not restricted to the intimate sphere.

Now the Fondation Beyeler presents an exhibition on her work, conceived with her assistance and specifically for the museum’s spaces. Gathered in groups, the works express renewed vitality in the rooms overlooking the water, garden and yellowed fields of early autumn.

The exhibition starts with a.k.a., 2008–2009, a number of photographic portraits, presented simply and in diptych form, of the artist captured at different times and ages in life. The combination does not follow any chronological criteria nor does it obey any form of hierarchy. The dialectic between continuity and change becomes explicit and the changes are emphasised. Before a.k.a. you have the impression that every picture expresses a separate identity.

In the next room, overlooking the garden, is Water Double – cylindrical monoliths of cast glass more than a metre tall and in diameter, with the outer surface of the circumference appearing opaque and wrinkled. Those looking into them from above have the illusion of a mirror of crystal-clear, still water but it is cast glass, translucent and transparent but solid. It reflects the images that appear and is sensitive to the changing light and weather conditions. This material has all these characteristics in common with the other major protagonist of Roni Horn’s work, water. Still Water (The River Thames, for Example), 1999, is an installation of photographs of the surface of the Thames, accompanied by notes written by the artist on the River’s history, its presence in the city and its relationship with people.

With the aim of involving the visitors, many of the notes speak directly to them in a friendly tone. The work displayed in the exhibition lives on the walls but is also the focus of a book of the same title. Indeed, books play a key role in the artist’s practice and their titles frequently refer to the possibility of ordering and categorising although the book content then rejects this as in the case of another Horn book on the water of the Thames, the Dictionary of Water. Again, there is no possibility of order for the illustrations of the water, which is carried by the current, endlessly flowing and altering, changing in form and reflecting external and internal conditions – without, however, undermining its essence.

The exhibition also shows a group of large, abstract drawings, actually produced via a complex and meticulous compositional technique: other drawings made previously with mineral pigment are cut up and the many snippets glued onto new paper, with the addition of delicate annotations or small lead-pencil strokes. The whole evokes maps, island perimeters and large bouquets of flowers.

The exhibition ends with The Selected Gifts 1974–2015, a recent photographic installation consisting in 67 single snaps of objects received by Roni Horn over the last 40 years. Objects of various kinds that friends have thought suited her and so given to her. For Horn, The Selected Gifts 1974–2015 is a “vicarious self-portrait”. She, herself, says it is extremely important. Indeed, the artist has stated that she sees this exhibition as a true self portrait, more so than all the many others held previously in hugely prestigious venues worldwide. As she has said, it is a complete exhibition, balanced as a whole and in its conceptual, formal and experiential content, and in the different idioms it develops. An opportunity to see herself from the inside and from behind.

until 1 January 2017
Roni Horn
Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 77, Riehen – Basel

Self portrait of an artist

The Fondation Beyeler is holding an exhibition on Roni Horn, who conceived it as a self-portrait specifically for the Swiss museum’s spaces.

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