Angelgoat, 2004
©Rebecca Horn / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2004
Photo: Gunter Lepkowski
The direct connection
between body and medium finds a more fleeting, abstract expression in
Rebecca Horn's drawings, yet they too evince a great degree of formal
clarity. The dynamics of movement appear in another manner in the
Bodylandscapes from 2003 and 2004, in a static medium characterized by
a multiple drawing movement that reaches the viewer almost immediately.
The artist herself describes these large, human-scale drawings thus: "The
body sends its antennas out far from itself, lines circling, searching out
a state of suspension white as snow. In these new drawings, which
correspond to my body's radius, a quiet communion with the pencil line
begins with the first mark, dividing the paper and organizing it into new
forms, with each stroke telling the next about its existence. Gives up,
picks up on, plays with, destroys, empties, plunges to the depths, spirals
upwards into the light, catches fire, melts, flies like ashes, grabs onto
the tail of the Fox Star, burns up in glowing red and descends deep into
the roots of the paper."
the image shows two works:
Left
side: Floating Souls, 1990
©Rebecca Horn / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2004
Right side: Les Amants, 1991
©Rebecca Horn / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2004
Photo: Attilio Maranzano
The Bodylandscapes'
intense, physically experienceable abstraction and immediacy meet the clarity
and legibility of the current installations, such as Yin Yang Drawing
the Landscape, made especially for Dusseldorf, or Licht gefangen im
Bauch des Wales (
Light Imprisoned in the Belly of the Whale). These works operate
with direct symbolism: the black and white of the sand circle, kept in
motion and muddied again and again by two silently moving, oversized
brushes, and the water's surface, whose reflections constantly rewrite the
text fragments on the wall.
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The viewer recognizes parts of a poem that only becomes
legible upon protracted observation, yet doesn't have to. In these works,
the poetic and surreal contents Rebecca Horn's early works so inimitably
held in a tense suspension between anticipation and transience are
condensed into universal symbols and language. Earlier installations, such
as Les Amants from 1991 or the triptych Kafka Series, did
entirely without words.
Both: Untitled, 1968-69
©Rebecca
Horn / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2004
Photo: Uwe H. Seyl
While the most recent room
installations set clearly legible, nearly obvious signs, the drawings of
the body and of landscapes surrounding the body operate with line and
structure. Rather than capture an object, they describe a movement, a
moment, and of course the 'momentum' that is the vital core of each of
Rebecca Horn's works.
There has always been a close connection
between sketch and room construction in Rebecca Horn's work, as the early
drawings from the 70s above all testify to; the highly dynamic, sometimes
hastily drawn red marks on paper of the "construction drawings" Horn used
to plan her works take on abstract qualities, such as in the
Überströmern.
Schwarzer Flügelschlag, 2004
©Rebecca Horn / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2004
Photo: Gunter Lepkowski
The Dusseldorf exhibition
enables viewers to discover both evident and surprising intersections in
the interaction between installation and paper work Horn has practiced for
decades. Observing a paper work such as
Schwarzer Flügelschlag (Black Wing Beat) from 2004 and
then progressing on to the poetic installation Spiral Bath, which
was made almost 20 years earlier, the viewer discovers an astonishing
harmony of movement: the one directly experienceable as it inscribes
itself into mercury, the other condensed, as a trace made on paper. Both
contain a circular spiral formation revolving around a mutable center, as
though we were watching an alert and uncommonly mobile mind at work that
leaves shimmering traces behind on its journey through the world.
Questioning the world with motion, moving through it and registering it;
leaving traces behind and inscribing them in a variety of media is the
essence of Rebecca Horn's poetic research.
Translation: Andrea
Scrima
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