REBECCA HORN

This extraordinary exhibition, which includes 55 works on paper, is the first dedicatedexclusively to this aspect of Rebecca Horn’s practice, and the most extensive presentationof her work in the United States since her major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum,New York, in 1993, curated by Germano Celant. From her earliest stages as an artist,drawing has been foundational and informed every aspect of Horn’s multi-faceted oeuvre,ranging from performances, which utilise bodily extensions, to feature films, poems,dynamic sculptures, and site-specific installations. Throughout her career, drawing hasoccupied a central role, with Horn working serially at different moments to create specificbodies of work, ranging from smaller, more intimate pieces to the later, largeBodylandscape works on paper.

The earliest works in the exhibition, dating from the mid-1960s, evince Horn’s concern withthe human form, bodily appendages, states of transformation, mechanisation, andmachinery, making evident her dedication to the aesthetic form of performance. In 1968,Horn was hospitalised for a debilitating lung condition brought on by certain sculpturalmaterials she was using. A subsequent period of convalescence at a sanitorium inspired aseries of sculptures concerned with the body, isolation, and physical vulnerability. Thesethemes became the artist’s subject, and her proposals for sculptures are documented inthese early drawings. Other works, from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, demonstrate themyriad approaches Horn has taken to the form, with each cycle of drawings having adistinct tempo, like the cadence of the poetry or rhythm of the music that have continuouslyinspired her. For her smaller drawings, Horn often worked simultaneously across multiplesheets of paper laid out before her, adding marks and details as she moved delicately andquickly, fluttering across the paper’s surface like a butterfly, touching down on each sheet atvarious intervals to make her marks.

From around 2003-2015, Horn produced an impressive group of large-scale works referredto as Bodylandscape, paintings on paper that extended her interest in the body as machineinto an autobiographical, performative arena. Incorporating pencil, acrylic, and watercolourand gouache with text, these energetic works are scaled to the artist’s own proportions,defined by the limit to which her arms could extend when building the sometimes-frenziedcompositions through the movements and actions of her own body. Horn’s progression fromattaching performative apparatus to her body in her early work, to creating mark producingautomatons and sculptural machines, is synthesised in these stunning works, which replacethe replicant machine with the body of the artist, bringing the arc of her career full circle. In2015, Horn suffered a devastating stroke, which sadly left her unable to continue makingdrawings, resulting in these psychologically charged works being among the final and finestworks on paper that she produced.

Following the New York installation of Labyrinth of the Soul, the exhibition will travel to SeanKelly, Los Angeles, marking a homecoming of sorts for the artist. Rebecca Horn lived in LosAngeles from 1972-73 and was active with a circle of artists including John Baldessari andEric Orr, amongst others. This will be the most significant presentation of Horn’s work onthe West Coast since her 1990 exhibition at MOCA, Los Angeles, entitled Driving throughBuster’s Bedroom, which was curated by Elizabeth Smith. Labyrinth of the Soul will provideviewers newfound insight into the artist’s practice and offer intriguing discoveries regardingHorn’s formal and informal relationships with artists ranging from Joseph Beuys, MarcelDuchamp, Jean Tinguely, Méret Oppenheim, Willem deKooning, and Hans Bellmer,amongst others.

Horn has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at venues around the world, includingthe Museum Tinguely, Basel; Centre Pompidou-Metz, France; Lehmbruck Museum,Duisburg, Germany; Tate Modern, London; the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; theNational Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi; the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge;Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; MOCA, Los Angeles; the Neue National Galerie, Berlin; the Kunsthalle Wein; theSerpentine Gallery, London; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museumof Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; the KunsthausZürich; and the Anthology Film Archives, New York, amongst others. She has beenincluded in group exhibitions at institutions including LACMA, Los Angeles; MoMA P.S.1,Long Island City, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; TheHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Royal Academy of Arts,London, UK; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin,Germany; and MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Bologna, Italy amongst others.Horn’s work has been presented at this year’s 59th Venice Biennials, as well as the 47thand 42nd editions and at documenta 5 and documenta 9. Her work is included in publiccollections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum ofModern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; the TateGallery, London, United Kingdom; Van Abbenmuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; the WalkerArt Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art,Turin, Italy; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; and the Centro Andaluz de ArteContemporáneo, Seville, Spain, to name a few. She has been the recipient of numerousawards including the 2017 Willhelm Lehmbruck Prize, Lehmbruck Museum; the 2016 Ordrepour le mérite des Arts et des Sciences, France; the Grande médaille des arts plastiquesfrom the Académie d’architecture de Paris, 2011; the 2010 Premium Imperiale Prize, Japan,and the 1988 Carnegie Prize.