Roni Horn

Roni Horn (1955- ) is an American visual artist and writer. She was born in New York in 1955, and lives and works in New York. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University.

Art

Horn explores the mutable nature of art through sculptures, works on paper, photography, and books. She describes drawing as the key activity in all her work because drawing is about composing relationships. Horn’s drawings concentrate on the materiality of the objects depicted. She also uses words as the basis for drawings and other works. Horn crafts complex relationships between the viewer and her work by installing a single piece on opposing walls, in adjoining rooms, or throughout a series of buildings. 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. Horn’s work also embodies the cyclical relationship between humankind and nature—a mirror-like relationship in which we attempt to remake nature in our own image.

Career

Since 1975 Horn has traveled often to Iceland, whose landscape and isolation have strongly influenced her practice. "Some Thames" (2000), a permanent installation at the University of Akureyri in Iceland, consists of 80 photographs of water dispersed throughout the university’s public spaces, echoing the ebb and flow of students and learning over time at the university. Roni Horn received the CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts, several NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim fellowship. She has had one-person exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Dia Center for the Arts, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial (1991, 2004); Documenta (1992); and Venice Biennale (1997), among others [http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/horn/index.html PBS] .]

In 2007, Horn created works based on weather, including "Vatnasafn/Library of Water," and installation in Stykkisholmur that is made up of water collected from glaciers. “Weather,” observes Roni Horn, “is the key paradox of our time. Weather that is nice is often weather that is wrong. The nice is occurring in the immediate and individual, and the wrong is occurring systemwide.” [citation | title= Becoming the Weather| author=Adrian Searle | publisher= Modern Painters | year=2007 | date= May 13, 2007| url=http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/25053/becoming-the-weather/ | accessdate=2008-04-28 ]

Documentaries on Roni Horn

Roni Horn was one of the artists featured on PBS' "Art:21" series of biographies of contemporary artists

References

* [http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/horn/ Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips] from PBS series "" - Season 3 (2005).

* [http://www.jca-online.com/horn.html JCA]
* [http://www.artnet.com/artist/8515/roni-horn.html Art Net]