Artist Roni Horn discusses the paradoxical identity and dependency of water, paired with scenes of Icelandic landscapes. Water and Iceland serve as both subjects and metaphors in the artist’s work, coming together most recently in Vatnasafn/Library of Water, a building designed by the artist in Stykkishólmur, Iceland.
Credits
Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Terry Doe & Mead Hunt. Sound: Ron Garson & Mark Mandler. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Special Thanks: Hauser & Wirth, London.
Roni Horn explores the mutable nature of art through sculptures, works on paper, photography, and books. She describes drawing as the key activity in all her work, “because drawing is about composing relationships.” Horn’s drawings concentrate on the materiality of the objects depicted. Horn crafts complex relationships between the viewer and her work by installing a single piece on opposing walls, in adjoining rooms, or throughout a series of buildings. Horn’s work also embodies the cyclical relationship between humankind and nature—a mirror-like relationship in which we attempt to remake nature in our own image.
“I think of water as a verb. I think of it as something that one experiences in its relation to other things, as opposed to in itself.”
Roni Horn
Artist Roni Horn discusses her works Doubt by Water, Some Thames, and Still Water.