RONI HORN (B. 1955) Untitled ("Peacocks not only eat flowers;...
RONI HORN (B. 1955)
Untitled ("Peacocks not only eat flowers; they eat them systematically, beginning at the head of a row and going down it. If they are not hungry, they will pick the flower anyway and let it drop. For general eating, they prefer chrysanthemums and roses.")
solid cast glass with as-cast surfaces
19 x 36 x 36 in (48.3 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm)
Executed 2012-13. This work is unique
Footnotes
Provenance
Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2015.
Known for a multidisciplinary practice comprising poetry, drawing, photography, sculpture and other media, Roni Horn has long explored a diversity of themes that hinge on malleability and its relationship to identity, perception, memory and meaning. With their opaque sides and smooth, reflective surfaces, Horn's glass sculptures—her most celebrated body of work—are installed on the floor where they continuously give the illusion of change through their interaction with light and their environments. Composed of solid glass, these illusions are paradoxical as the object itself changes only as its meaning is continuously perceived and experienced by the viewer. These works demonstrate Horn's mastery of skill and her astute ability to capture the nuances of truth and perception.
Horn began making glass sculptures in the 1990s, created by pouring liquid glass into molds, cooling them over several months, and then torching their tops to create a mirror-like finish. Sensuous and alluring, these forms invite the viewer to gaze in, creating active participation as each viewer experiences the reflection of themselves and their surroundings. As Briony Fer writes, "what Horn dramatizes... is that precarious and porous relationship between inside and outside, as if the surface of the image is the most fragile of membranes... This sense of inwardness and introspection is part of the fundamental paradox in all of Horn's work... An image of pure exposure —to the outside, to the elements —can also be seen as an interior monologue, a sequence of the most minute shifts in emotion and feeling" (Briony Fer, "Roni Horn: Face-to-face," Roni Horn: The Detour of Identity, Gottingen 2024, p. 445).
In their cylindrical form, these sculptures mimic pools of water and in their rectangular form, cubes of ice. A sculptural trompe l'oeil, herein lies their formal paradox—toeing the line between liquid and solid, the inherent fragility of glass is also juxtaposed by its apparent sturdiness when shaped to this size and weight. As a material, glass must be a liquid before it can be a solid, and its transparent visual appearance alludes to the memory of its past self. In "Heavy Light: Roni in the Arctic Circle," critic Zoë Lescaze explains the materiality of these works inform our experience of them, saying:
"Horn's choice of optical glass—the kind used for the lenses of microscopes, telescopes, and other devices that bring distant landmarks, far away planets, and microbial worlds into focus—hints at the fact that these sculptures are also instruments of perception. What they reveal is ceaseless fluidity: the flux that is the only constant of our world and an inescapable condition of living within it. Placed in natural light (as they always are), the glass cylinders transform with the oscillations of the environment, from warm to cool, dim to bright, and back again. They have no fixed identity or definitive appearance. The longer we look at them, the more they change and the more unknowable they become. As lenses, these sculptures show the viewers who linger with them that stillness is an illusion, stasis a mirage. Other lenses and scopes involving optical glass are instruments of confirmation and clarity. These sculptures are instruments of doubt" (Roni Horn: Give Me Paradox or Give Me Death, Cologne 2024, p. 225).
Glass as a material further embodies Horn's longtime fascination with the Double and its relationship to identity. A concept first coined by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 text The Uncanny, the Double is that of the inextricable dialectic between Self and the Other, arguing that though paradoxical (and therefore uncanny) the Other is an equally necessary part of the Self. Horn's sculptures therefore allow for the fluid relationship between binaries and the movement between worlds or states of being, such as the conscious and the unconscious, internal and external, sameness and otherness, subject and object. Similar in appearance to water—a recurrent theme in Horn's oeuvre—glass further heightens her emphasis on mutability, also a feature of all things in nature as in life itself.
The present work, Untitled ("Peacocks not only eat flowers; they eat them systematically, beginning at the head of a row and going down it. If they are not hungry, they will pick the flower anyway and let it drop. For general eating, they prefer chrysanthemums and roses.") from 2013 emanates a soft green glow that is both natural and otherworldly. Also a poet, Horn often takes the titles of her works from literature; in this instance from Flannery O'Connor's "Living with a Peacock", a personal essay published in Holiday magazine in 1961. O'Connor raised peacocks on her family farm and in the text speaks of them as the bird of Hera in Greek Mythology, at once representing vanity, beauty and pride. The poem speaks directly to the material nature of glass as a reflective surface that, much like our perceptions, is both stable and ever changing.
The present work's sister work, Untitled ("The peacock likes to sit on gates or fenceposts and allow his tail to hang down. A peacock on a fencepost is a superb sight. Six or seven peacocks on a gate is beyond description, but it is not very good for the gate. Our fenceposts tend to lean and all our gates open diagonally.") is in the permanent collection of the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. Other glass sculptures can be found in the permanent collections of major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, the Pinault Collection in Paris, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark.
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RONI HORN (B. 1955)
Untitled ("Peacocks not only eat flowers; they eat them systematically, beginning at the head of a row and going down it. If they are not hungry, they will pick the flower anyway and let it drop. For general eating, they prefer chrysanthemums and roses.")
solid cast glass with as-cast surfaces
19 x 36 x 36 in (48.3 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm)
Executed 2012-13. This work is unique
Footnotes
Provenance
Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2015.
Known for a multidisciplinary practice comprising poetry, drawing, photography, sculpture and other media, Roni Horn has long explored a diversity of themes that hinge on malleability and its relationship to identity, perception, memory and meaning. With their opaque sides and smooth, reflective surfaces, Horn's glass sculptures—her most celebrated body of work—are installed on the floor where they continuously give the illusion of change through their interaction with light and their environments. Composed of solid glass, these illusions are paradoxical as the object itself changes only as its meaning is continuously perceived and experienced by the viewer. These works demonstrate Horn's mastery of skill and her astute ability to capture the nuances of truth and perception.
Horn began making glass sculptures in the 1990s, created by pouring liquid glass into molds, cooling them over several months, and then torching their tops to create a mirror-like finish. Sensuous and alluring, these forms invite the viewer to gaze in, creating active participation as each viewer experiences the reflection of themselves and their surroundings. As Briony Fer writes, "what Horn dramatizes... is that precarious and porous relationship between inside and outside, as if the surface of the image is the most fragile of membranes... This sense of inwardness and introspection is part of the fundamental paradox in all of Horn's work... An image of pure exposure —to the outside, to the elements —can also be seen as an interior monologue, a sequence of the most minute shifts in emotion and feeling" (Briony Fer, "Roni Horn: Face-to-face," Roni Horn: The Detour of Identity, Gottingen 2024, p. 445).
In their cylindrical form, these sculptures mimic pools of water and in their rectangular form, cubes of ice. A sculptural trompe l'oeil, herein lies their formal paradox—toeing the line between liquid and solid, the inherent fragility of glass is also juxtaposed by its apparent sturdiness when shaped to this size and weight. As a material, glass must be a liquid before it can be a solid, and its transparent visual appearance alludes to the memory of its past self. In "Heavy Light: Roni in the Arctic Circle," critic Zoë Lescaze explains the materiality of these works inform our experience of them, saying:
"Horn's choice of optical glass—the kind used for the lenses of microscopes, telescopes, and other devices that bring distant landmarks, far away planets, and microbial worlds into focus—hints at the fact that these sculptures are also instruments of perception. What they reveal is ceaseless fluidity: the flux that is the only constant of our world and an inescapable condition of living within it. Placed in natural light (as they always are), the glass cylinders transform with the oscillations of the environment, from warm to cool, dim to bright, and back again. They have no fixed identity or definitive appearance. The longer we look at them, the more they change and the more unknowable they become. As lenses, these sculptures show the viewers who linger with them that stillness is an illusion, stasis a mirage. Other lenses and scopes involving optical glass are instruments of confirmation and clarity. These sculptures are instruments of doubt" (Roni Horn: Give Me Paradox or Give Me Death, Cologne 2024, p. 225).
Glass as a material further embodies Horn's longtime fascination with the Double and its relationship to identity. A concept first coined by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 text The Uncanny, the Double is that of the inextricable dialectic between Self and the Other, arguing that though paradoxical (and therefore uncanny) the Other is an equally necessary part of the Self. Horn's sculptures therefore allow for the fluid relationship between binaries and the movement between worlds or states of being, such as the conscious and the unconscious, internal and external, sameness and otherness, subject and object. Similar in appearance to water—a recurrent theme in Horn's oeuvre—glass further heightens her emphasis on mutability, also a feature of all things in nature as in life itself.
The present work, Untitled ("Peacocks not only eat flowers; they eat them systematically, beginning at the head of a row and going down it. If they are not hungry, they will pick the flower anyway and let it drop. For general eating, they prefer chrysanthemums and roses.") from 2013 emanates a soft green glow that is both natural and otherworldly. Also a poet, Horn often takes the titles of her works from literature; in this instance from Flannery O'Connor's "Living with a Peacock", a personal essay published in Holiday magazine in 1961. O'Connor raised peacocks on her family farm and in the text speaks of them as the bird of Hera in Greek Mythology, at once representing vanity, beauty and pride. The poem speaks directly to the material nature of glass as a reflective surface that, much like our perceptions, is both stable and ever changing.
The present work's sister work, Untitled ("The peacock likes to sit on gates or fenceposts and allow his tail to hang down. A peacock on a fencepost is a superb sight. Six or seven peacocks on a gate is beyond description, but it is not very good for the gate. Our fenceposts tend to lean and all our gates open diagonally.") is in the permanent collection of the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. Other glass sculptures can be found in the permanent collections of major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, the Pinault Collection in Paris, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark.
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