Roni Horn

Since the late 1970s, Roni Horn has produced drawings, photography, sculpture and installations, as well as works involving words and writing. Horn’s work, which has an emotional and psychological dimension, can be seen an engagement with post-Minimalist forms as containers for affective perception. She talks about her work being 'moody' and ‘site-dependent’. Her attention to the specific qualities of certain materials spans all mediums, from the textured pigment drawings, to the use of solid gold or cast glass, and rubber. Nature and humankind, the weather, literature and poetry are central to her art. In 1990, she made the first in an evocative, on-going series of books entitled To Place. She has referred to these books, which explore themes such as identity, site specificity and nature through photographs of the landscapes, ice, water and people of Iceland, as “the entrance to all my work …which is extremely important to me.” An Artangel commission led to the creation of Vatnasafn/Library of Water, a sculptural installation and a community centre in a library building in Stykkisholmur in Iceland in 2007.

Roni Horn (b. 1955, New York) lives and works in New York and Reykjavik, Iceland. Recent museum exhibitions include Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2017); Glenstone, Potomac (2017); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2016-2017); De Pont Museum, Tilburg (2016) and Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles (2015). A major retrospective Roni Horn aka Roni Horn (2009-10) was jointly organised by Tate Modern in London and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Her works feature in many important public collections, including the MoMA, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, New York; Museum Krüller-Müller, The Netherlands and Kunstmuseum, Basel.

Download BiographyUpdated 30 October 2020