ZURICH.- Hauser & Wirth Zürich is presenting ‘Wits’ End Sampler | Recent Drawings’, an exhibition of large-scale drawings by acclaimed American artist Roni Horn and the unveiling of a new installation. 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 to the protean nature of identity, meaning, and perception, as well as the notion of doubling; issues which continue to propel Horn’s practice.

For Horn, drawing is a primary activity that has been a defining area of her artistic practice since 1980, and the pigment drawings explore recurrent themes of identity, interpretation and textual play. In drawings from the Yet series, Horn has worked powdered pigment, graphite and varnish into a few first phase drawings called ‘plates’, which are then cut apart. These pieces are then rearranged and assembled, and may undergo several more cycles of splicing and stitching together before taking their ultimate form. Pencil marks, numbers and words are interspersed between shards of colour as Horn annotates the joining of plates in each drawing.

‘Wits’ End Sampler’ is a new installation that will be shown for the first time in Zurich. Idioms and textual play have always been a significant part of Horn’s work. For this project, Horn invited strangers and associates to write out idioms and clichés of their choosing. This eventually accumulated into over 1000 individual phrases all handwritten by the many authors. Walls of the second floor gallery will be silk-screened with these idioms to create a constructed linguistic environment. ‘Wits’ End Sampler’ is a work where Horn acts as ‘a choreographer of words’, as Gary Indiana has called the artist.

Roni Horn was born in 1955 and lives and works in New York NY and Reykjavik, Iceland. In March 2017, the Glenstone Museum, Potomac MA presented a survey exhibition of four decades of Horn's work. Other solo exhibitions include 'Roni Horn', de Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands (2016); ‘Roni Horn. Butterfly to Oblivion’, Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles, France (2015); ‘Roni Horn. Butterfly Doubt’, Hauser & Wirth London (2015); the travelling exhibition 'Roni Horn. "Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake"', first shown at Hauser & Wirth New York, 18th Street (2013) and then Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain (2014) and Caixa Forum, Madrid, Spain (2014); 'Photographien / Photographic Works', Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany (2011); and 'Well and Truly', Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2010). In November 2009, Horn's comprehensive survey exhibition 'Roni Horn aka Roni Horn' opened at Tate Modern and travelled to Collection Lambert in Avignon, France (2009); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (2009); and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA (2010). In January 2013, Horn was awarded the Joan Miró Prize and JRP Ringier also published the first major publication to focus solely on Horn's extensive drawing practice. Horn's works are featured in numerous major international institutions and collections including the Guggenheim Museum, New York NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL; Tate Modern, London, England; Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany; Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.