The Temporary Contemporary
Roni Horn was the first major museum exhibition of the post-minimalist artist’s work. The show included five sculptures or installations, displayed at MOCA’s Temporary Contemporary. Paradigmatic of Horn’s lifelong interest in evocative materials, bodily perception, and empty spaces, each of the works in the exhibition were site-dependent on the individual rooms in which they were placed.
The exhibition began with Asphere VII (1990), a stainless steel, barely distorted “sphere” that the artist has described as a self-portrait, and Form from the Gold Field (1980-82), a rippled sheet of 99.99% pure gold placed directly on the floor. Bluff Life (1982) included 13 watercolor and graphite drawings made in a lighthouse on a bluff in Iceland, where the artist frequently worked; Thicket no. 2 (1989-90) comprised two aluminum floor slabs with the word “TIGER” embedded into each of the sides facing away from the room’s entrance. The final installation, Pair Object III: For Two Rooms (1986-90), placed two copper, cone-like forms in separate galleries, each pointing identically toward the rooms’ shared entrance. Doubles, and their oscillation between sameness and difference, are major themes in Horn’s work and reflect her personal experiences of androgyny and queerness. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.
Roni Horn was organized by Ann Goldstein, Assistant Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
The Temporary Contemporary is the original name of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.