BOOKTALKS｜Artists’ Books Series — Roni Horn
Speaker
Yin-Chin Tsai Art Book Researcher and Independent Curator
Location
Winsing Art Place (No. 6, Lane 10, Lane 180, Section 6, Section 6, Minquan East Road, Neihu District, Taipei City)
Fee
$500 (including bookstore entrance fee and a cup of Pour-over coffee)
Introduction
This lecture aims to comprehensively analyze the relationship between American artist Roni Horn's artists' books and her creative context, exploring how the artist employs the material conditions and formative forms of books to orchestrate a series of post-minimalist perceptual engagements: Themes such as weather, literature, poetry, humanity, and nature are embedded within the textual writings and visual arrangements of the pages. Through the intimate act of turning pages and the linguistic qualities of reading, the audience/reader is invited into the artist's personal emotional landscape and psychological dimensions.
“I have always felt androgyny as central to my relationship with both myself and the work. As far as an individual's experience with a given work goes, I throw the issue of self-identity back out to the viewer.” - Roni Horn
Mark B. Godfrey, British art historian and former curator at Tate Modern, noted in his 2009 journal article, titled“Roni Horn’s Icelandic Encyclopaedia”: The To Place series collectively constitutes one of the most significant artist’s book projects since Ed Ruscha's 1960s books and Bernd & Hilla Becher's industrial architecture publications. It has become a paradigm for contemporary artist bookmaking, continuing to exert influence.
It can be said that without understanding Horn's artists’ books, one cannot grasp the core of her creative concepts. She once remarked in an interview: “The To Place series is the gateway to all my work; it is profoundly important to me.” Published since 1990, this series comprises eleven volumes to date, documenting the artist's long-term engagement with Iceland. Through photographs of the region's landscapes, geology, icebergs, water, and people, it explores themes of identity, natural ecology, and specific sites.
The lecture will present Roni Horn's series of artists’ books spanning over three decades, examining four key themes: “Icelandic Encyclopaedia,”“Autobiographical Dictionary,”“Imaginative Texts on Water,” and “Handbook of Portrait Identity” to unravel the metaphorical and symbolic linguistic structures woven into her books.
