Rebecca Horn
Born 1944 in Michelstadt, Germany
Lives and works in Berlin and Paris
Since the beginning of the 1970s, Rebecca Horn has been creating an oeuvre which constitutes an ever-growing flow of performances, films, sculptures, spatial installations, drawings and photographs. The essence of their imagery comes out of the tremendous precision of the physical and technical functionality she uses to stage her works each time within a particular space. In the first performances, the body-extensions, she explores the equilibrium between body and space. In later works she replaces the human body with kinetic sculptures which take on their own life. Her new works define and cut through spaces with reflections of mirrors, light and music.
The objects used and specially made for her installations such as violins, suitcases, batons, ladders, pianos, feather fans, metronomes, small metal hammers, black water basins, spiral drawing machines and huge funnels together build the elements for kinetic sculptures that are liberated from their defined materiality and continuously transposed into ever-changing metaphors touching on mythical, historical, literary and spiritual imagery.
Rebecca Horn studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg and at Saint Martins College of Art, London. In 1974 she teaches at the California Art Institute, University of San Diego and in 1989 begins teaching at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin. Rebecca Horn had numerous solo-exhibitions and her restrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, travelled to the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (both in 1993), and to the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, the Kunsthalle, Vienna, the Tate Gallery and The Serpentine Gallery, London (all in 1994). The Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, presented a comprehensive retrospective in 2006. Her documenta participations include documenta 1972, 1977, 1982, 1984 and 1992.
EXHIBITIONS:
4.11.2011 – February 2012
"The Ephemeral"
Group exhibition with works by
Absalon | Joseph Beuys | Sophie Calle | Joe Coleman | Wim Delvoye | Rebecca Horn | Mathilde ter Heijne | Jannis Kounellis | Heinz Mack | Keisuke Matsuura | Christian Meegert | David Noonan | Henk Peeters | Jackson Pollock | Julian Rosefeldt | Matt Saunders | Chiharu Shiota | Miroslav Tichý | Grazia Toderi | Susan Turcot | Franz West | Nick van Woert | Yang Jiechang
Rebecca Horn, Plaidoyer d’un fou, 1991, Metal construction, book, powder, motor, Measurements variabel