A major exhibition of the acclaimed German artist Rebecca Horn was presented concurrently at Serpentine and Tate.
This was Horn’s second solo exhibition at the Serpentine, following her mid-career retrospective in 1984.
Shifting gracefully from one creative genre to another, Horn is a sculptor who has devises surreal extensions to the human body, a performance artist who directs feature length films and a poet who constructs elaborate mechanised sculptures. Themes of emotional fragility and, transformation and desire are interwoven in the narratives of all her works.
Born in Germany in 1944, Rebecca Horn studied painting and sculpture at the Hamburg Art Academy. After a long illness she started to create performance pieces in which she used soft elements to wrap and extend the body. Many of these ritualistic actions were documented by her on film. She later began to make the anthropomorphic machines and installations which were the central focus of the exhibition.
Horn’s ‘machines’ follow a ritualised rhythm – an instrument will play, or a hammer will tap- until randomly they pause to rest, or suddenly shock with an unexpected violence. Symbolic elements are employed – mercury, feathers, the egg and the serpent, electricity and ink, the hammer and scissors – to evoke an iconography used by alchemists and wizards. These are accompanied by components such as binoculars and a blind man’s cane which are concerned with sight and vision.
One of the most spectacular works, ‘Concert for Anarchy’ comprises a motorised grand piano suspended upside down from the ceiling. With a sudden painful clash the keyboard cover opens and shoots out its keys which dangle for an interval before slowly retracing, wires twanging as it withdraws back into itself.
The exhibition also included works by such as ‘River of the Moon’ and ‘Kiss of the Rhinoceros’ as well as the body extensions.
The exhibitions was originally conceived for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, new York and was selected by Germano Celant and Nancy Spector in close collaboration with the artist.
Sponsored by Becks
Additional support from The Henry Moore Foundation, Deutsche Bank AG and the German government.
