ZURICH.- Known for conceptually oriented work in diverse media, Roni Horn continues her exploration of identity and difference with the exhibition ‘An Elusive Red Figure...’, on view at Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse. Opening this June during Zurich Art Weekend, Horn presents a new work titled: ‘An elusive Red Figure darting about in the Venetian darkness; a red dwarf burning out beyond Saturn; a nasty gang of runts in red snowsuits acting out in a North American suburb; an attractive young Italian woman dressed in red is stalked by a lesbian serial killer; a village girl, the prettiest you can imagine, in a red velvet hood cut from the belly of a sleeping wolf ....’ (2022).

‘An Elusive Red Figure...’ is a suite of 33 paired ink jet prints, presented across the second-floor gallery space. Following on from the 2021 work ‘LOG (March 22, 2019 – May 17, 2020)’, ‘An Elusive Red Figure...’ is a collection of outtakes from ‘LOG’ as well as original drawings, including quotations, collages, photographs, casual commentaries, notes on news and weather events and original texts by Horn. ‘LOG’, which debuted at Hauser & Wirth New York in 2021, is a large-scale installation comprised of 406 individual works on paper. The work was the result of a daily commitment to drawing undertaken by Horn over a period of fourteen months.

Drawing has been a defining element of Horn’s artistic practice since the 1980s and ‘An Elusive Red Figure…’ is emblematic of Horn’s relationship with the medium, which she has described as ‘a kind of breathing activity on a daily level.’ Whilst creating the drawings on paper that would become the paired ink jet prints for ‘An Elusive Red Figure…’, Horn would describe the events of weather, private life and anything notable that came to mind or hand at the time. One set of prints notes the temperature during a trip that the artist took to Zurich in July in 2019, others feature photographs of the artist, or cultural figures such as Aretha Franklin or Elizabeth Taylor, pasted alongside drawings or notations. Another page coloured bright yellow is inscribed with the line ‘I am paralyzed with hope’ from a monologue by the stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, which Horn describes as a ‘poignant connection to our time with regards to politics and the environment and now, of course, in relation to the pandemic’.

Her preoccupation with language permeates the works; scattered words read as a stream of consciousness spiralling across the paper. ‘I’m not telling you what I’m doing every day’, says Horn, ‘but when you add all of these bits together, you get my sensibility.’ These intricate works on paper extend Horn’s masterful use of mirroring and textual play to explore the materiality of colour and the sculptural potential of drawing.

Roni Horn’s work consistently generates uncertainty to thwart closure in her work. 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.

Recent exhibitions include ‘Roni Horn: I am paralysed with hope’, Centro Botín, Santander, Spain (2022); ‘Félix González-Torres / Roni Horn’, Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection, Paris, France (2022); ‘Roni Horn: When You See Your Reflection in Water, Do You Recognize the Water in You?’, Pola Museum, Hakone, Japan (2021 – 2022); ‘Roni Horn. You are the Weather’, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Switzerland (2020); ‘Roni Horn: When I Breathe, I Draw, Part I’, Menil Collection, Houston TX (2019), ‘Roni Horn’, Glenstone Museum, Potomac MD (2017), a survey exhibition of four decades of Horn’s work; ‘Roni Horn’, Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland (2016); ‘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); ‘Roni Horn. “Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake”’, travelling from Hauser & Wirth New York, 18th Street (2013) to 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).

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.