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Roni Horn

"Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake" is the poetic title the artist Roni Horn choosed for her first monographic exhibition in Barcelona.

“Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake” is the artist’s first monographic exhibition in Barcelona.

Through her work, Horn questions the world around her, her own identity, and her relationship with the environment.

The works in the show include her latest sculptural installation, which has only been shown once before at Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York. The exhibition explores a range of approaches and media that the artist has used over the past twenty years, including sculptural installations, photographic series, working drawings and a large floor piece.

Roni Horn, Untitled, 2012–13 — **Top**: Dead Owl, 1997, detail, 2 Iris-printed photographs on paper. 29 x 29 in. / 73.7 x 73.7 cm each. © Roni Horn. **Above**: Untitled (“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the deathcup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.”), 2012–2013. Solid cast glass with as-cast surfaces. 10 units, 18½ x 36 in. / 47 x 91.4 cm each. © Roni Horn

The show has been conceived by the artist herself, and explores the different media and approaches that she has used over the past twenty years. It covers the major themes and formats that make up her work: sculptural installations, photographic series, working drawings, and a floor piece entitled Rings of Lispector (Água Viva) that combines drawing and literary quotes. The title of the exhibition Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake is taken from Fernando Pessoa’s Livro do desassossego, published in 1935.

Roni Horn, “Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake”, installation view, Fundació Joan Miró 2014

The exhibition is intended to offer an overall experience, like a huge installation comprised of all the pieces on display.

The selection of works, which Roni Horn made with the Fundació Joan Miró and CaixaForum Madrid spaces specifically in mind, is a compendium of the elements that underpin the artist’s creative process: people, the landscape, light, words, water, presence, glass, faces, change, forms, series, spaces, the appearance of the self, and time.

Roni Horn, You are the Weather, Part 2, 2011 — Roni Horn, *You are the Weather, Part 2*, 2011, 100 pigment-printed photographs mounted on Sintra 10 x 8½ in. / 26.5 x 21.6 cm each. Installation view, Fundació Joan Miró 2014 © Roni Horn

Until 28 September 2014
Roni Horn. Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake
Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona

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Roni Horn

﻿"Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake" is the poetic title the artist Roni Horn choosed for her first monographic exhibition in Barcelona.

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"Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake" is the poetic title the artist Roni Horn choosed for her first monographic exhibition in Barcelona.