Roni Horn at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Roni Horn, The Detour of Identity, All works copyright Roni Horn. Exhibition installation view. Photo: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art/Kim Hansen.
 

By SABRINA ROMAN August 27, 2024

There’s a lot you could take away from Roni Horn at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The Detour of Identity as this recent show of theirs has been christened, relies upon commodities that are equally perceivable as ornamental and philosophical. Pointedly, there are also  little to no accompanying descriptors within this exhibition\s press release that particularly proclaims these creations as being any given thing. So, whilst their creator may recognise the objects that she produces as “existing in a very impure world, fraught with entropy and dirt” (Thompson, M, BOMB, 1999), there’s also encouragement of observers to come to their individual conclusions. A case in point, one review sees , the author question, “Isn’t identity, at least in 2024, supposed to be fluid and loud, a ferocious outfit that stands or stands one out? Don’t all these right angles oppose fluidity and noise? Aren’t detours just avoidances?” (Friis, N, Spike Art, 2024) Another writer similarly speculates that the artist’s “photographs and objects rarely come singly, but as doubles, or in the case of images, in series: they invite you to look again, to find similarities and differences, to see things that perhaps aren’t even there” (Walton, M, Wallpaper, 2024).

By themselves, the wonderful, wacky and downright strange commodities  that populate the parabolic realm Horn summons, introduce themselves as being continuously  mutable and therefore, unceasingly  interpretable, they are in an otherwise fluctuating, impermanent circumstance. This deliberately considered praxis by itself, reinforces  even the more innocuous commodity within ‘The Detour of Identity as reflecting the quicksilver psyches of individuality, interpretation as well as discernment that Horn so keenly  looks to capture. They go on to handily nets these conceptualisations in through Brink of infinity (1991/97) before reeling them further through Cabinet of (2001-2002), no pun intended particularly as the former effectively amounts to a portrayal of a forebodingly tumultuous body of water stirred up by an ocean storm. That doesn’t entirely mean there aren’t a multitude of intentions that aren't capable of floating to the top of the surface, decidedly those that are buoyed by more profound contemplations of brutality and sexuality. Both are, in fact, reflected on through Horn’s decision to position cast glass sculptures alongside selected recordings from productions including Psycho (1960), Melancholia (2011) and  A Year of 13 Moons (1978) amongst others where the script has already been written and the cast set. In The Detour of Identity on the other hand, observers get to determine for themselves whether its producer is the protagonist or antagonist, hero or villain. WM

Roni Horn, The Detour of Identity, All works copyright Roni Horn. Exhibition installation view. Photo: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art/Kim Hansen.