Rebecca Horn
On exhibit are five mechanical sculptures, realized between 1988 and 2022, and three Bodylandscapes, Horn's signature, large drawings, whose dimensions correspond exactly to the maximum extension of her body.
In each of her works, Horn's poetics, focused on the concept of energy, emerges as well as a mysterious force evoking sensual and eros imbued desire. An emotional force that places the viewer in contact with the artist's interior world and with her very soul.
Horn's mechanical sculptures have a life of their own, and express a universe fraught with references and allusions. Thus, in her 1998 work entitled Art Eaters, some mechanical crickets, symbols of life, rebirth and transformation, move on the surface of large white canvases upon which the artist has painted patches of blue.
Similar to the Surrealists, Horn provocatively combines heterogeneous objects in her kinetic works, creating unexpected associations of great poetic force. She repeatedly makes use of everyday objects or objects taken from the world of nature and endows them with symbolic and metaphorical meanings, such as the paintbrushes in Die zehnköpfige Schlange (The Ten-Headed Serpent), the bridal shoes in Die Preussische Brautmaschine (The Prussian Wedding Machine), the mirrors in Die Brüste der Dreieinigkeit (The Breasts of the Trinity) and the shell in Die Dreifaltigkeit der Begierde (The Trinity of Desire), a metaphor for the female universe.
The Bodylandscapes respectively entitled Schreib Winde (Writing Wrench), Feder Flug (Flight of Feathers) and Schwebezustand der Seelenfrucht (The Fluctuating State of the Fruit of the Soul), are realized as performative acts capable of placing the artist's interior and exterior worlds in relation through the impulsive and immediate force of the sign that evokes images of cosmic landscapes on the surface. These works, intended not only as traces of physical movement, but also as expressions of emotional and passionate impetus, characterize Horn's oeuvre and, albeit with a different medium of expression, are in keeping with her performances of the Seventies centered on the body.
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Rebecca Horn
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