Roni Horn: The Detour of Identity
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek
2 May – 1 September 2024
The Detour of Identity, 1984–85
Gouache on paper/ board
© Roni Horn
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Untitled (Weather) 2010-2011
Detail
© Roni Horn
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Photo: Alex Delfanne
Untitled (Weather) 2010-2011
Detail
© Roni Horn
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Photo: Alex Delfanne
With cinematic art as its prism, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presents American artist RONI HORN (b. 1955). This exhibition introduces a new approach to photography, drawing and sculpture by one of the most distinctive voices of our time. Iconic scenes from some of cinema’s greatest films form part of the presentation of the artist’s work. In keeping with Roni Horn’s preoccupation with the changing weather – with light and movement – the extensive exhibition is being shown in daylight – natural light – in Louisiana’s South Wing.
“The inspiration Roni Horn takes from film, her fascination for film imagery and the narrative of images, is new ground on which to present her work. Louisiana’s guests will move through the South Wing, crosscutting between Horn’s works and sequences from film, which constitute an active and significant part of the material that has shaped the artist.”– Poul Erik Tøjner, Louisiana’s Director.
Roni Horn often applies the language and effects of film in her practice, and, as in the world of film, she exploits the tension between the outer world, where the socially defined body predominates, and the inner world of conscious reality, where the body, with its urges and desires, resides. Throughout the exhibition these clips from some of history’s most famous film narratives form a parallel path to Roni Horn’s oeuvre.
There is something very powerful about the work of Roni Horn. Seemingly razor-sharp and cool, it juxtaposes humans and landscape, permanence and changeability, obscurity and transparency in a flow of light, water and weather. Horn tackles themes such as identity and sexuality. Who am I? What does my gender mean? What language do we have to express emotions? Are emotions private? What is the order of nature vis-à-vis humankind?
Her questions are philosophical and fundamental; her answers are tangible works of art. But the works never come across as answers – they are more like quasi facts that require interpretation. Horn does not beg for our attention in order to be permitted to reveal. We must ask ourselves what we are seeing; there is little use in asking Roni Horn because the artist cares little for the notion that we require information before encountering her art. Knowledge, she says, can act as an obstacle to experience.
Identity is the central and recurring theme in the exhibition’s selection of films and film clips – the quest for identity, loss of identity, mistaken or stolen identity, and so on. Each of the films has, on some level, been important to Roni Horn, and therefore each represents another identification, be it with the actions of the character or with the knowledge that organises the film’s narrative and imagery.
The exhibition is an imaginary journey through the artist’s imagery, expanding to include the sense of community that has emerged around many of these celebrated films. A few examples of the film clips in the exhibition are Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Vertigo, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Claude Chabrol’s The Does and Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Dead Owl, 1997
Detail
© Roni Horn
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Photo: Bill Jacobson
Untitled ("My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.
I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance.
I have often thought that with any luck at all
I could have been born a werewolf,
because the two middle fingers
on both my hands are the same length,
but I have had to be content with what I had.
I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise.
I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet,
and Amanita phalloides, the deathcup mushroom.
Everyone else in my family is dead.") 2012-2013
© Roni Horn
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Photo: Genevieve Hanson
Roni Horn has been represented in Louisiana’s collection for over twenty years. From some Thames (2000) was acquired for the collection in 2002. Later came the glass sculpture Untitled (“The sensation of longing for an eclipse of the moon.”) from 2013 and the major work a.k.a. (2008–2009), which deals with identity and consists of thirty photographs from Roni Horn’s life, all depictions of her taken by different people over time. The same person is at once both herself and 29 others. It is a beautifully lucid and entirely undogmatic demonstration of how difficult it can be to say exactly who and what someone is; and the fluidity, the things that cannot be captured or fixed – from the weather to the light to water to sexuality, to dreams, to, well, who you are – flows through Louisiana’s exhibition, even in the handsome sculptures of infinitely slowly setting tempered glass that let light play in colours of immense beauty.
Published by Steidl / Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
472 pages, 539 images
Otabind softcover, 24.7 x 29.7 cm, English
ISBN 978-3-96999-378-1
The exhibition is accompanied by an international publication (in English) entitled The Detour of Identity. The publication, edited by Jerry Gorovoy, is published in collaboration with Louisiana Museum of Modern Art by the German publisher Steidl and features texts by Briony Fer, Elisabeth Bronfen and Gary Indiana. Foreword by Poul Erik Tøjner and introduction by Jerry Gorovoy.
The exhibition has been curated by Roni Horn’s long-time friend Jerry Gorovoy, also known as the personal assistant to Louise Bourgeois for four decades, in collaboration with Louisiana’s Director Poul Erik Tøjner.
Louisiana Channel has produced the videos Roni Horn – Saying Water (2013) and Roni Horn – Interviewed by Dayanita Singh (2013). Both are available on Louisiana Channel: https://channel.louisiana.dk/
LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Gl. Strandvej 13 - 3050 Humlebæk
