Roni Horn Books

"Everyone has a story about the weather. This may be the single thing each of us holds in common. And though the weather varies greatly from here to there, it is, ultimately, one weather that we share. Small talk everywhere has occasioned the popular distribution of the weather. Some say talking about the weather is talking about oneself. And with each passing day, the weather increasingly becomes ours, if not us. "Weather Reports You" is one beginning of a collective self-portrait." Over the past two years Roni Horn has been working with a small team in the south west of Iceland gathering personal testimonies from people talking about the weather. These "weather reports" include descriptions, reflections, memories and stories based on experiences of the weather that range from the matter-of-fact to the marvelous. The different nuances and usages of language suggest that the weather is not just a matter of meteorological conditions but is, in Horn's words, "a metaphor for the physical, metaphysical, political, social and moral energy of a person and a place."

This is Me, This is You is Roni Horn's handbook on identity. It is also a book with no end. Peruse the 48 images taken with a point-and-shoot camera and, as you arrive at the last image, flip the book over and begin again. Each image reappears, in a version taken just seconds later. A single and singular portrait of one young girl taken over a two-year period, This is Me, This is You evokes a multitude of identities, images and icons, of everything that can be subtly revealed in the process of visiting and revisiting a single person through a camera, through time.

"Roni Horn (b. 1955) is a prominent contemporary artist known for her sculptures, photography, and installations inspired by landscape and the natural world, and especially the isolated landscapes of Iceland, where she has travelled and lived for substantial periods of time since the early 1970s. Horn's work explores geology and climate; the interplay of nature, art, and place; and the relationships between words, appearance, androgyny, and the self. Horn is author of more than twenty books and artist's books, and is herself the subject of more than thirty books and exhibition catalogs, including a survey published by Phaidon and many by Steidl. Examples of her work include You Are the Weather (1994-96), a series of photographs of a young woman bathing in Icelandic hot springs; Pair Objects (1988), identical metal sculptures placed in two different locations; and the installation Library of Water (2007) in Iceland, with columns that enclose water from melting glaciers. Horn is arguably the most important visual chronicler of the landscape of Iceland. Upon graduating from her MFA program at Yale, she traveled to Iceland, journeying across its interior on a motorcycle. Over thirty years, she has continually returned to Iceland to explore and record the astonishing beauty of its geology, climate, and culture. This book will contain a range of texts, from evocative vignettes to illustrated essays written for Iceland's most widely-read newspaper. A combination of artists' writings and travelogue, the texts reveal Iceland as one of Horne's most important influences and inspirations, and record a unique and beautiful environment undergoing climate change"-- Provided by publisher

Transforming personal experience into a visual narrative, this work offers an emotionally profound exploration that captivates the viewer. Its immersive quality encourages repeated engagement, making it a unique and beguiling addition to the realm of visual art.

Exploring identity and difference, this collection features 406 drawings and various media created by Roni Horn over fourteen months. It captures the complexity of daily life amid significant events, including the onset of a global pandemic and political turmoil. The work blends humor, strangeness, and profound emotion, showcasing casual commentaries, collages, and original texts. With themes of nature and changing weather, it offers an immersive visual experience that invites multiple viewings, first exhibited in New York City in early 2021.

In her artist's book 82 Postcards, Roni Horn (born 1955) takes the titular medium and classifies its photographs, designs and text in a unique system of symbols and visual codes. Her translation of these mementos--mostly from North America, but some from farther afield--lays bare the interplay of their various parts, questioning how pieces of content come together to form the basis of complex cultural phenomena like tourist attractions, popular science and national identity.

Your life is a rare form of transparency through which I have observed the world becoming more present to itself and through which I have become more present to myself. Roni Horn, An Uncountable Infinity (for Felix Gonzalez-Torres), 1996 In 1990 Félix González-Torres encountered an artwork by Roni Horn called Gold Field (1980/82), a simple sheet of gold foil placed on the floor of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. González-Torres was deeply moved and wrote to Horn, beginning an exchange between the artists that would last until González-Torres' passing in 1996. Félix González-Torres Roni Horn was created as a photographic essay with the intention of sharing the experiential qualities of the artists' work and the profound relationships underlying it. It explores four iconic works (among others)-"Untitled" (For Stockholm) (1992) and "Untitled" (Blood) (1992) by González-Torres, and Well and Truly (2009-10) and a.k.a. (2008-09) by Horn-and emphasizes notions of doubling, duality, repetition, and identity. Images of these pieces, taken on the occasion of a 2022 exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection in Paris, reveal both artists' radical visual vocabularies, as well their shared passion for language, writing and poetry. Their intention emerges as two-fold: to create a tension between artist, viewer and object; and to grasp the inexpressible, the immeasurable.

In the south of Iceland is Landbrot, whose geologic particulars present a unique landscape. It is a place closer to fairy tales than to science, indeed a place easy to imagine as the singular source of fairies and elves worldwide. It is easy, too, to imagine the sensual comfort and satisfaction to be found there. Mother, Wonder is the eleventh book in Horn’s ongoing series “To Place,” which she initiated in 1989 and exists only in book form. All the volumes focus on Iceland and the evolving experiences of the artist there; together they form a flowing dialogue addressing the relationship between identity and place. The titles to date in the coveted “To Place” encyclopedia are Bluff Life (1990), Folds (1991), Lava (1992), Pooling Waters (1994), Verne’s Journey (1995), Haraldsdóttir (1996), Arctic Circles (1998), Becoming a Landscape (2001), Doubt Box (2006) and Haraldsdóttir, Part Two (2011).