Roni Horn

Untitled (“The sensation of sadness at having slept through a shower of meteors.”)

Price available upon request

2012 – 2014
Solid cast glass with as-cast surfaces, with oculus
Unique
91.4 x 91.4 cm / 36 x 36 in

Roni Horn’s mesmerizing ‘Untitled (“The sensation of sadness at having slept through a shower of meteors.”)’ (2012 – 2014) belongs to an important group of cast-glass sculptures that Horn began in the mid-1990s. With the dramatic Icelandic landscape serving as a wellspring of inspiration, these sculptures range in size and color. Here, the vibrant green calls to mind the bright fields of green amid the cool blues and icy whites of the dynamic Nordic island.

To produce these works, colored molten glass is poured into a mold, assuming its shape and qualities as it gradually anneals over three to four months. The sides and bottom of the resulting sculpture are left with the rough translucent impression of the mold in which it was cast. The top surface is fire-polished and slightly bowed like liquid under tension, a stark contrast to the rest of the work. The seductively glossy surface invites the viewer to gaze into the optically pristine interior of the sculpture, as if looking down to the bottom of a body of water through an aqueous oculus.

Horn’s glass sculpture relies upon natural elements like the weather to manifest her binary experimentations in color, weight and solidity. Depending on the light around the sculpture and the position of the viewer, the work is surprisingly transparent or dramatically reflective, an alchemical duality. Interested in exploring mutable and fleeting experiences, Horn invites comparison and contemplation between objects and their surroundings as they change based upon the conditions of time and place.

Literary themes, which surge and resurface throughout much of Horn’s work, are reflected in her glass sculptures. The artist derives titles for works from literary quotations that she frequently sources from the writings of Emily Dickinson, Flannery O’Connor, Hank Williams or Anne Carson. In ‘Untitled (“The sensation of sadness at having slept through a shower of meteors.”),’ Horn sources the title from Hollis Frampton’s ‘Circles of Confusion’ (1983). Always descriptive, Horn’s titles offer a narrative portal through which to enter and explore her work, while still retaining an open and ambiguous quality.

Though Horn’s glass sculptures do not literally change shape or materiality, they appear to do so as the viewer looks at the work. The glass—neither liquid nor solid—is wholly amorphous, which makes Horn’s solid, massive sculptures deeply paradoxical. The endless subtle shifts in the work’s appearance place it in an eternal state of mutability and becoming as it refuses a fixed visual identity. Begetting solidity and singularity, the changing appearance of her sculptures is where one discovers meaning and connects her work to the concept of identity as fluid and shaped by external factors.

About the artist

Using drawing, photography, installation, sculpture and literature, Roni Horn’s work consistently questions and generates uncertainty to thwart closure in her work, engaging with many different concerns and materials. Important across her oeuvre is her longstanding interest in the protean nature of identity, meaning and perception, as well as the notion of doubling; issues that continue to propel Horn’s practice.

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