Roni Horn - A rat surrendered here

From 1st of July until 24st of October 2021 - A RAT SURRENDERED HERE is an exhibition about death in the overall work of the American artist Roni Horn. The exhibition will premiere the 10-ton glass installation, Water Double, v. 4, along with sculpture, photography, and drawing. The title of the exhibition is inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem, that Horn incorporated in an aluminum sculpture from her Key and Cue series (1994-1995).

In this exhibition, Horn’s use of the formal device of the paired form is related to the psychoanalytic concepts of ego-splitting and the uncanny. Psychoanalytically speaking, the figure of the double, for example the Doppelgänger in literature and film, is the uncanny harbinger of death. In Horn’s work, death is present both as a literal fact—the dead body reports in Still Water—and as a philosophical inquiry into the unknowns of the human condition. The experiential qualities of light, shadow, and reflection in Horn’s work correspond to the mutability of identity and, with it, the unknowability of death.