The German-born artist Rebecca Horn—recognized for her progressive conceptual exploration of the human physique in sculptures, movies, performances and images—has died aged 80. Her loss of life was confirmed on social media by Sean Kelly Gallery in New York who known as her “one of the outstanding artists of her technology”.
Horn was born in 1944 in Michelstadt, Germany, and later studied at Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, and St Martins College of Artwork in London. Most of her work attracts on sickness together with a key interval as a young person when she contracted tuberculosis. The author Lauren Mechling mentioned final yr that “infused with poetry and ache, Horn’s output performs with the chances and limitations of the human physique.”
A pivotal collection, Private Artwork (1968-72), included early examples of her body-modification fits made from bandages, belts and feathers which have been described as “wearable sculpture”.
In 1972, she made Pencil Masks, which transforms the wearer’s head right into a drawing instrument. “All pencils are about two inches lengthy and produce the profile of my face in three dimensions. I transfer my physique rhythmically from left to proper in entrance of a white wall. The pencils make marks on the wall the picture of which corresponds to the rhythm of my actions,” she mentioned. The work is owned by Tate.
In 1992, Tate Britain confirmed her Ballet of the Woodpeckers set up. “Right here small hammers faucet mirrors like birds startled by their very own reflection. It was initially put in in a psychiatric hospital in Vienna. Lengthy-term sufferers skilled it alongside exterior guests. To recall the presence of the sufferers when the work was moved, Horn added two glass funnels full of mercury,” the Tate caption reads.
Concurrent together with her installations and performances, Horn maintained a wealthy drawing observe all through her profession, the Sean Kelly gallery provides, saying: “At occasions, her drawings have been coextensive of her work in different media, as in her drawings which doc sculptural proposals. Horn’s Bodylandscape drawings, produced between 2003 and 2015, translate the curiosity in exploring the bounds of the physique current in her sculptures and performances to the medium of drawing.”
In a 1994 interview with Frieze journal, Horn mentioned: “Taboos change enormously inside every technology, so maybe mine are slightly completely different from yours. All the pieces is feasible, if you need it sufficient. There are completely different limits. You could stroll near the sting. Genet, Buñuel, Pasolini… These are individuals who went to the sting. That is necessary, even if you’re attacked for it.”
This week the Berlin-based Galerie Thomas Schulte launches a present devoted to Horn entitled Live performance of Sighs (11 September-2 November). “Piled on the ground are constructing pallets, wall fragments, and wood boards, lay strewn in piles on the ground from which skinny copper tubes wind like plant shoots, ending in funnel-like trumpet mouths. The artist used constructing supplies from the ruins of Venetian homes for her set up, which was initially created for the 1997 Venice Biennale,” the gallery says in an announcement.
Set up view of Rebecca Horn’s Tower of the Anonymous (1994) Picture: Markus Tretter © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
Horn was additionally an honorary Royal Academician (Royal Academy of Artwork, London). “The essence of images [in her work] comes out of the super precision of the bodily and technical performance she makes use of to stage her works every time inside a selected area,” a Royal Academy assertion says.
Earlier this yr a retrospective of works by Horn opened on the Haus der Kunst in Munich; Jana Baumann, the co-curator of the present, featured on The Artwork Newspaper’s podcast The Week in Artwork. Andrea Lissoni, the inventive director on the Munich gallery, mentioned that Horn is a visionary artist who levels the interaction of our bodies, machines, shifting pictures, and sound in “new, distinctive and numerous languages which might be forward of their time”.
Rebecca Horn; born Michelstadt, Gau Hesse-Nassau, Germany, 24 March 1944; Documenta Preis, Kassel 1986, Carnegie Prize, Carnegie Worldwide, Pittsburgh 1988, Hon RA (Honorary Royal Academician) 2009, Praemium Imperiale Prize for sculpture, Japan Artwork Affiliation 2010; died Dangerous König, Hesse, Germany, 6 September 2024.
