Roni Horn - Böcker

An evocative chronicle of the power of solitude in the natural worldI’m often asked, but have no idea why I chose Iceland, why I first started going, why I still go. In truth I believe Iceland chose me.—from the introductionContemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island’s treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn’s creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, Island Zombie distills the artist’s lifelong experience of Iceland’s natural environment. Together, these pieces offer an unforgettable exploration of the indefinable and inescapable force of remote, elemental places, and provide a sustained look at how an island and its atmosphere can take possession of the innermost self.Island Zombie is a meditation on being present. It vividly conveys Horn’s experiences, from the deeply profound to the joyful and absurd. Through powerful evocations of the changing weather and other natural phenomena—the violence of the wind, the often aggressive birds, the imposing influence of glaciers, and the ubiquitous presence of water in all its variety—we come to understand the author’s abiding need for Iceland, a place uniquely essential to Horn’s creative and spiritual life. The dramatic surroundings provoke examinations of self-sufficiency and isolation, and these ruminations summon a range of cultural companions, including El Greco, Emily Dickinson, Judy Garland, Wallace Stevens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Morris, and Rachel Carson. While brilliantly portraying nature’s sublime energy, Horn also confronts issues of consumption, destruction, and loss, as the industrial and man-made encroach on Icelandic wilderness.Filled with musings on a secluded region that perpetually encourages a sense of discovery, Island Zombie illuminates a wild and beautiful Iceland that remains essential and new.

An evocative chronicle of the power of solitude in the natural worldI’m often asked, but have no idea why I chose Iceland, why I first started going, why I still go. In truth I believe Iceland chose me.—from the introductionContemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island’s treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn’s creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, Island Zombie distills the artist’s lifelong experience of Iceland’s natural environment. Together, these pieces offer an unforgettable exploration of the indefinable and inescapable force of remote, elemental places, and provide a sustained look at how an island and its atmosphere can take possession of the innermost self.Island Zombie is a meditation on being present. It vividly conveys Horn’s experiences, from the deeply profound to the joyful and absurd. Through powerful evocations of the changing weather and other natural phenomena—the violence of the wind, the often aggressive birds, the imposing influence of glaciers, and the ubiquitous presence of water in all its variety—we come to understand the author’s abiding need for Iceland, a place uniquely essential to Horn’s creative and spiritual life. The dramatic surroundings provoke examinations of self-sufficiency and isolation, and these ruminations summon a range of cultural companions, including El Greco, Emily Dickinson, Judy Garland, Wallace Stevens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Morris, and Rachel Carson. While brilliantly portraying nature’s sublime energy, Horn also confronts issues of consumption, destruction, and loss, as the industrial and man-made encroach on Icelandic wilderness.Filled with musings on a secluded region that perpetually encourages a sense of discovery, Island Zombie illuminates a wild and beautiful Iceland that remains essential and new.

A new book by Roni Horn, Her∂ubrei∂ at Home is a collection of photographs of the landscape of home in Iceland. Her∂ubrei∂, Iceland’s much-loved mountain, and Stéfan V. Jónsson, who painted the mountain throughout his life, are at the center of this work. His paintings of Her∂ubrei∂ have found their way into the homes of Icelanders around the country making it the cultural and geologic leitmotiv and mascot of the island. Roni Horn was born in New York where she continues to live and work. Recent solo exhibitions of her work include the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Fundacao Serralves, Porto; Fotomuseum Winterthur and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Her recent publications, Dictionary of Water, This is Me, This is You, Cabinet of, If on a Winter’s Night…, Her, Her, Her, & Her, Wonderwater (Alice Offshore), Index Cixous (Cix Pax), Doubt Box (Book IX of To Place) have all been published by Steidl.

Hack Wit is a playful and complex body of work developed between 2013 and 2015, using clichés or proverbs and watercolor. For each work, the artist made two watercolors of a different proverb, cut them apart and then combined them into one. The Canadian poet Anne Carson wrote the text Hack Gloss in response to the “Hack Wit” drawings.

Roni Horn transforms comedian Maria Bamford’s phrase, "I am paralyzed with hope," into a powerful examination of language and emotion in her latest artist’s book.American artist Roni Horn’s practice is propelled by a multifaceted investigation into the nature of identity, mutability, and language. Encompassing drawing, photography, sculpture, installation, and artist’s books, her work frequently involves the written word. Seizure of Hope is the eighth installment in a series of artist’s books by Horn and the fourth to be published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers, following celebrated titles such as bird (2008), aka (2010), and Wit’s End (2021). This meticulously designed, limited-edition publication collects a series of drawings that were inspired by a line from a monologue by the American comedian Maria Bamford: “I am paralyzed with hope.” Horn felt that the statement, which she describes as “at once a silent and insidious undercurrent and an endless scream,” resonated with contemporary anxieties, and she began to write and rewrite it, drawing over the words with a wax crayon that caused their letters to bleed. Making use of numerous gatefolds to reproduce the artist’s expansive, multi-sheet drawings in precise detail, Seizure of Hope is a spectacular record of Horn’s arresting meditation on language, emotion, and the nature of hope.