Rebecca Horn's (b. 1944, Germany) six-decade-spanning transmedia life's work deals with the theme of existence and the blurring of the boundaries between nature and culture, technology and biological capital, and the human and the non-human.
Rebecca Horn, Butterfly, Detail, Butterfly, Steel, Mechanical Parts and Electric Motor, 1990, Archive Rebecca Horn © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
Whether the artist can be described as an inventor, director, author, composer or poet, she sees herself first and foremost as a choreographer. Horn describes her practice as precisely calculated relationships of space, light, physicality, tone and rhythm that form an ensemble. Becoming a machine, becoming an animal, or becoming an earth in her performative, sculptural, and cinematic works aim at a presence of a visible, palpable, and audible existence that can be experienced by bodies.
Rebecca Horn, Unicorn, C-Print (contact print), 1970, Archive Rebecca Horn © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
The exhibition "Rebecca Horn" develops a reading dedicated to performativity, which can be experienced from its beginnings to the last works. Horn uses the idea of incorporation and creates symbols of technical physical networking since her first works on paper in the 1960s, the early performances and films of the 1970s, the mechanical sculptures since the 1980s, and the expansive installations of the 1990s to the present day. Virtuoso interwoven references from literature, art and film history run through her entire life's work. Horn's work is a lifelong and explosive exploration of the progressive decentration of man.
Curated by Jana Baumann with Radia Soukni. The exhibition is supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. The catalogue is published by Spector Books.
26 April to 13 October 2024
