Roni Horn: An Elusive Red Figure…

Known for conceptually oriented work in diverse media, Roni Horn continues her exploration of identity and difference with the exhibition ‘An Elusive Red Figure…,’ on view at Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse. Horn presents a new work titled: ‘An elusive Red Figure darting about in the Venetian darkness; a red dwarf burning out beyond Saturn; a nasty gang of runts in red snowsuits acting out in a North American suburb; an attractive young Italian woman dressed in red is stalked by a lesbian serial killer; a village girl, the prettiest you can imagine, in a red velvet hood cut from the belly of a sleeping wolf ….’ (2022).

‘An Elusive Red Figure…’ is a suite of 33 paired ink jet prints, presented across the second-floor gallery space. Following on from the 2021 work ‘LOG (March 22, 2019 – May 17, 2020),’ ‘An Elusive Red Figure…’ is a collection of outtakes from ‘LOG’ as well as original drawings, including quotations, collages, photographs, casual commentaries, notes on news and weather events and original texts by Horn. ‘LOG,’ which debuted at Hauser & Wirth New York in 2021, is a large-scale installation comprised of 406 individual works on paper. The work was the result of a daily commitment to drawing undertaken by Horn over a period of fourteen months.

Drawing has been a defining element of Horn’s artistic practice since the 1980s and ‘An Elusive Red Figure…’ is emblematic of Horn’s relationship with the medium, which she has described as ‘a kind of breathing activity on a daily level.’ Whilst creating the drawings on paper that would become the paired ink jet prints for ‘An Elusive Red Figure…,’ Horn would describe the events of weather, private life and anything notable that came to mind or hand at the time. One page dated from 2019 is a diaristic account from a visit to Zurich in 94 degrees Fahrenheit weather, featuring a photographic portrait of the artist above handwritten idioms such as ‘I could cry my eyes out’ and ‘laugh my head off.’ Another page colored bright yellow is inscribed with the line ‘I am paralyzed with hope’ from a monologue by the stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, which Horn describes as a ‘poignant connection to our time with regards to politics and the environment and now, of course, in relation to the pandemic.’

Her preoccupation with language permeates the works; scattered words read as a stream of consciousness spiralling across the paper. ‘I’m not telling you what I’m doing every day,’ says Horn, ‘but when you add all of these bits together, you get my sensibility.’ These intricate works on paper extend Horn’s masterful use of mirroring and textual play to explore the materiality of color and the sculptural potential of drawing.