 Roni Horn Clowd and Coun (Gray) Roni Horn (b. 1955 in New York), known to an international audience for numer-ous exhibitions since the 1980s, uses her work in a variety of media as a way to reflect on the phenomenological appearance of simple things and everyday natural motifs. Her drawings, objects, photos, texts and artist's books try to show things exactly as they present themselves to the human perception capable of a careful enough look. Her installative sculptures and pictures often confront us with reality fragments that channel our attention towards the clear observation of form and content and the material and sensuous diversity of appearances. Fragility and heaviness, closeness and distance, sameness and separation – these are the conceptual pairings that define the terms in which her work presents the subtle interrelationships between dual sets of equal dimensions. These pairings of sets of two equal elements represent a fundamental aspect of the artist's strategy to assign the viewer an active role in the oscillating interplay between seeing and seen, perception and memory. Horn's conceptual preference for photographic series makes it possible to register almost imperceptible changes and thus to plumb questions of difference and identity that are closely tied to the spatial and temporal setting provided by the immediate surroundings. The work on view at the Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber, "Clowd and Cloun (Gray)" from 2001, is a set of 32 photographs that confronts the viewer with fleeting phenomena in time and space. The serial hanging of this photo installation is modelled on the principle of an architectural frieze, surrounding the viewer like one whole, total sculpture. It is in this alternating sequence of the two motifs of the cloud and the clown that the concentration of form and content on a single theme is undermined, paradoxically revealing the series of pictures to the viewer as a complete and balanced whole: with no hint of a beginning or an end – and therefore a prearranged narrative structure –, it is the viewer's movements around the room and the dynamics of her gaze that construct the unity of the work and maintain its stability. The juxtaposition of the two motifs of cloud and clown allows the artist to lay open the diverse visual modalities of atmosphere and time and capture changes that would remain invisible to the naked eye. Dissipation, elusiveness, disappear-ance and ephemeral phenomena in time and space are integral aspects of both the passing cloud and the role of the clown, which hides the persona of the performer behind a mask for the duration of a show. At the same time, the figure of the clown represents a conventional, symbolic fixation of identity that is here jux-taposed with the elusive consistency of a cloud. This work's continuous process of revelation by photographically arresting a moment enables us to see reality as an infinite number of fleeting, almost invisible phenomena. Alternating natural phenomena with subtle changes in human facial expressions, Roni Horn explores the interplay between fixation and movement while examining the metamorphoses of nature and human emotions, which, in the equal arrangement of the two motifs, coalesce into a coherent whole. The photo installation, "Clowd and Cloun (Gray)", and its counterpart, "Clowd and Cloun (Blue)", were first shown at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 2001, together with two more photo series and a sculptural work. "Clowd and Cloun (Blue)" will be on view in a solo exhibition of the artist at the Fotomuseum Winterthur from 29 March to 1 June 2003. Ausstellungsdauer: 22.3. - 3.5.2003 Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr 12-18 Uhr, Sa 11-16 Uhr Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber Löwenbräum-Areal Limmatstrasse 270 8005 Zürich Telefon: 01 446 80 60 Fax: 01 446 80 65 E-Mail: info@ghwp.ch www.ghwp.ch |
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