Roni Horn

"Iceland is really the center of action for me," Roni Horn has said. "Since I grew up in New York people think I'm escaping from all its lunacy. Not at all. When I go to Iceland that's where I get nervous, where I think: 'Oh my God, this is intense.'" Horn's new book Herdubreid at Home is a collection of photographs of the Icelandic landscape. As with previous works by Horn, its focus is specific: the book concentrates on Iceland's beloved geologic mascot, the mountain Herdubreid, and on the related work of Stéfan V. Jónnsson, who painted the mountain throughout his life, and whose images have found their way into the homes of Icelanders across the country. Through this singular attention Herdubreid at Home conveys an intimacy that is particular to the book form. As Horn says, "a book is really a sensual…experience and I use these books to focus people in this very intimate one-on-one relationship."… (mere)

Inspired by the philosopher and writer Hélène Cixous, which whom the photographer and artist Roni Horn has collaborated before, Index Cixous questions the nature of language in its most fundamental sense and proposes a version--one without words, but which can be read as any other. Both Horn and Cixous are concerned with communication wrought out of material space. Cixous writes about women's language arising from the female body, and she argues for a new language, one not in thrall to patriarchy but that acknowledges the life-giving force and history of the feminine.… (mere)

Emily Dickinson's poems stand alone in the English language in their severe yet wild shapeliness and unhindered dexterity of thought. In Earths Grow Thick, the American artist Roni Horn put those poems--or lines from them--to new uses, incorporating her words in a series of austere, stick-like sculptures. Horn makes similar use of William Blake, but her sympathy with the work of Dickinson is clear, and results in a beautiful form or word sculpture. This handsome catalogue is published in conjunction with the first exhibition to present the four bodies of Horn's work comprising the Dickinson sculptures. The illustrations are complemented by texts ranging from Judith Fox's interview with Horn to bell hooks' intimate recollections of her childhood introduction to Dickinson's work.… (mere)