Roni Horn
So I just discovered this artist Roni Horn today.
Her work is so genderqueer. And it's frequently text-based, which I love due to my persistent love-hate obsession with language. Since gender and language are the spaces within which I am currently working, Roni's work sparked my interest right away. That, and just reading these quotes of hers describing her work, the way she talks about it, the way it is...I just feel it in my bones--I'm not her, I know we're different, but I feel like I know exactly what she's saying, like I can almost breathe it.
"Key and Cue, No. 288"
1994
Solid aluminum and black plastic, 51 x 2 x 2 inches
Photo by Oren Slor
Courtesy Max Protetch Gallery, New York
"My relationship to my work is extremely verbal, extremely language-based. I am probably more language-based than I am visual, and I move through language to arrive at the visual. So I’ve always questioned whether I am really a visual artist. You get into this situation where your ‘identity’ takes over your actual being because you get stuck with whatever it is you resemble to other people-not who you are. They’re not necessarily the same thing."
- Roni Horn
"Asphere"
1986-1993
Solid copper, 12 inches x variable diameter
Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
"I think of 'Asphere' as a self-portrait. I don’t think I made it as a self-portrait, but when I look at it I see that it has characteristics that I identify with very strongly. One of those qualities is that it’s not a sphere, and it’s nothing else. I can relate to that. It’s not an egg or a ball. It doesn’t have a name or a word that closes it off from things. In the best way, it’s just floating out there without a clear identity."
- Roni Horn
Sometimes you see a work of art, or a body of work, and it fuses itself into your consciousness. That feeling is so rare--that feeling of connecting with something bigger than words, somehow made accessible to you in the form of whatever artwork you're looking at...it reminds me why I'm an artist at all.
It's so thrilling!
Her work is so genderqueer. And it's frequently text-based, which I love due to my persistent love-hate obsession with language. Since gender and language are the spaces within which I am currently working, Roni's work sparked my interest right away. That, and just reading these quotes of hers describing her work, the way she talks about it, the way it is...I just feel it in my bones--I'm not her, I know we're different, but I feel like I know exactly what she's saying, like I can almost breathe it.
"Key and Cue, No. 288"
1994
Solid aluminum and black plastic, 51 x 2 x 2 inches
Photo by Oren Slor
Courtesy Max Protetch Gallery, New York
"My relationship to my work is extremely verbal, extremely language-based. I am probably more language-based than I am visual, and I move through language to arrive at the visual. So I’ve always questioned whether I am really a visual artist. You get into this situation where your ‘identity’ takes over your actual being because you get stuck with whatever it is you resemble to other people-not who you are. They’re not necessarily the same thing."
- Roni Horn
"Asphere"
1986-1993
Solid copper, 12 inches x variable diameter
Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
"I think of 'Asphere' as a self-portrait. I don’t think I made it as a self-portrait, but when I look at it I see that it has characteristics that I identify with very strongly. One of those qualities is that it’s not a sphere, and it’s nothing else. I can relate to that. It’s not an egg or a ball. It doesn’t have a name or a word that closes it off from things. In the best way, it’s just floating out there without a clear identity."
- Roni Horn
Sometimes you see a work of art, or a body of work, and it fuses itself into your consciousness. That feeling is so rare--that feeling of connecting with something bigger than words, somehow made accessible to you in the form of whatever artwork you're looking at...it reminds me why I'm an artist at all.
It's so thrilling!