Roni Horn

Kafka’s Palindrome

1991

Roni Horn’s sculpture is of its place—it is “site-dependent,” in that it is responsive to the space in which it is located. In 1989, Horn began making sculptures featuring text, thus combining language, form, and material. These works, with strong references to the landscape, are contingent on the position of the spectator, as they may only be fully comprehended when one walks around them. For Kafka’s Palindrome, Horn embedded this excerpt from Franz Kafka’s Diaries 1910–1923 into the four sides of a trapezoidal aluminum form: “It would be enough/to consider the spot/where I am as/some other spot.” Consistent with Horn’s use of text, language functions empirically and physically—what the words mean is inseparable from what they are.

Roni Horn (b. 1955, New York; lives and works in New York)
Kafka’s Palindrome, 1991
Aluminum and plastic
Approximately 4 1/2 x 49 x 40 1/4 in.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of Burrows Family