Roni Horn exhibit elevates her work at Beacon museum
Memo to visitors at Dia Beacon’s Roni Horn exhibition: Keep your heads up to avoid tripping or stubbing a toe. “Objects of Constancy,” which weighs in at 300 pounds and looks like an oversized stick of licorice (or seven strands of intertwined rebar), rests in the middle of a walkway.
Other dense works, made of cast lead, are tucked into a nook and also placed on the floor by the artist. “Mass Removal II” and “Mass Removal III,” created with hand-hammering and a pneumatic drill, resemble elongated clamshells with scuffed-up interiors.
The tops of four rocks-from-another-planet, an excerpt from the eight-piece Space Buttress series, look like petrified wood (one of which conveys the illusion of a knot). In contrast, the sides evoke moss-covered stone.
“Things That Happen Again,” another floor-based sculpture, consists of two shiny 1,752-pound copper cylinders placed at 90-degree angles. In a separate room, the cast iron pieces that make up “Post Work 3” resemble textured loudspeakers on poles and hint at an Easter Island vibe.
“Vertical sculptures generally suggest the human form, just as horizontal works are often associated with landscapes,” says curator Donna De Salvo.
More than a sculptor, Horn installed this long-term exhibit that elevates her work into the pantheon of artists occupying permanent and semi-permanent spaces in the massive museum, like Donald Judd, Richard Serra and Andy Warhol.
“Horn was friends with Serra, and Judd arranged for the permanent install of another version of ‘Things That Happen Again’ at Marfa [his 45,000-acre ranch and gallery in Texas], so she fits right in,” says De Salvo.
Of the exhibit’s 23 works, nine are owned by Dia; the abstract color and texture studies hanging on the walls are on loan from the artist and her gallery.
These framed works date to the mid-1980s. Horn deployed similar motifs and techniques in later, larger creations, says De Salvo. Building on a back-mounted sheet of paper, she created a second layer with smaller fragments of thicker, mottled paper arranged in a collage style covered with colorful, slate-like shapes seemingly outlined in black.
Three works titled “Brooklyn Red” are accompanied by a couple of Brooklyn whites, Hamilton reds and Brooklyn grays. Some of the shapes seem three-dimensional, especially in “This 1,” where the colored blotch looks bent like a butterfly wing.
Horn enjoys pairing subjects, like the paper work “Untitled (Hamilton),” which looks like a couple of nuclear reactors. The objects in “Double I I’ ” and “Double N N’ ” seem more risque.
In 2001 and 2002, as her international renown began to grow, Horn held two solo shows at the Dia Center for the Arts in Manhattan. Now, she’s on the same level at Dia Beacon as Robert Ryman, Gerhard Richter and Louise Bourgeois. It’s rare for a living artist to achieve such recognition (she is 69).
“We’ve had a real commitment to her for more than 20 years,” says De Salvo. “She’s one of the major figures of her generation and there’s a dialogue with our other artists on view.”
Dia Beacon, at 3 Beekman St., is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday to Monday. Admission is $20 ($18 seniors, $12 students and disabled visitors, $5 ages 5 to 11, free for members, ages 5 and younger and Beacon and Newburgh residents). See diaart.org.
