Roni Horn: Some Thames
Event
Roni Horn (New York, 1955) is an American artist who lives between New York and Reykjavik, Iceland. From a very young age she developed a passion for literature and philosophy, before her interest in the visual arts, and led her to see her library as a core engine for herself and her work. The practice of drawing is key and crucial in her oeuvre, and she has also been using other media, such as sculpture, photography and artist’s books. Travelling and immersing in the landscape - especially that of Iceland - are essential in her work, which explores themes such as weather and ecology, along with memory, identity and change. The representation of the outside world is used as an artifice or metaphor to reach an inner and mental space.
These eight photographs of the River Thames belong to a series of 80 pictures that Serralves exhibited in her solo exhibition in 2001 and which were acquired at the time for the Collection. In Some Thames (2000-2001), Horn captures moments of the Thames’ flowing surface, getting a set of images that are seemingly abstract and very similar to each other. In fact, they are realistic images and there are infinite differences between them, although imperceptible at first glance.
On the one hand, this approach points directly to the experience and perception that each one of us has of the passage of time. On the other hand, water, often represented or evoked in the artist's work, is an allusion to life, the body, sexuality, but also death. As the literature tells us - namely Charles Dickens and Joseph Conrad - in the dark waters of the Thames, the bodies of many of those who had violent deaths were thrown, as were many who committed suicide in these waters.
These eight photographs of the River Thames belong to a series of 80 pictures that Serralves exhibited in her solo exhibition in 2001 and which were acquired at the time for the Collection. In Some Thames (2000-2001), Horn captures moments of the Thames’ flowing surface, getting a set of images that are seemingly abstract and very similar to each other. In fact, they are realistic images and there are infinite differences between them, although imperceptible at first glance.
On the one hand, this approach points directly to the experience and perception that each one of us has of the passage of time. On the other hand, water, often represented or evoked in the artist's work, is an allusion to life, the body, sexuality, but also death. As the literature tells us - namely Charles Dickens and Joseph Conrad - in the dark waters of the Thames, the bodies of many of those who had violent deaths were thrown, as were many who committed suicide in these waters.
