American artist Roni Horn is admired internationally for the quiet seriousness of her exquisitely conceived artworks. Horn has concentrated on a small, highly personal selection of subjects in her work: the tradition of Minimal sculpture, and our response to it, Iceland, a place she has visited regularly for many years, and the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Emily Dickinson. Groupings of sculptures and photographs are often presented together in large installations which invite the viewer’s full, prolonged attention in the observation of precise, subtle shifts of detail or mood, offering a heightened sense of environment and presence in the world.
Independent curator and editor Louise Neri (co-curator of the Whitney Biennial, 1996) examines recurring themes and formal structures in Horn’s work. Lynne Cooke, curator at New York’s Dia Center, discusses with the artist her shift from three-dimensional (sculpture) to two-dimensional forms (photography), and theorist Thierry de Duve concentrates on Horn’s series of photographs You Are the Weather, featured at the 1997 Venice Biennale. The Artist’s Choice is from a short story by Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector. This volume contains the largest collection available of the artist’s eloquent writings. Their cool, simple style – describing Iceland, or commenting on poetry and literature – reflects the intense, pared-down ambience of her art.