Francesco Clemente
New Works
Roni Horn
Her, her, her and her
20 May – 22 August 2004
Reykjavik Art Museum – Kjarvalsstadir
Flokagata, 105 Reykjavik, Iceland
Box 110, 121 Reykjavik
Tel. + 354-590 1200
Fax + 354 590 1201
artmuseum [at] rvk.is
Conversation with Francesco Clemente
Wednesday, May 19th at 5 pm.
Public View Thursday, May 20th at 3 pm.
Francesco Clemente. Water, 2003 watercolours. Galerie Bruno Bischofberger.
Reykjavik Art Museum is proud to announce major exhibitions of new works by Francesco Clemente and Roni Horn, two highly celebrated artists of their generation.
FRANCESCO CLEMENTE started his career in Italy as a conceptual artist and had his first one-man show in Rome in 1971. At the end of the 1970s he began painting and quickly became recognised internationally. His work was included in some of the most important group exhibitions of that time such as the Venice Biennale in 1980.
Clemente visited India for the first time in 1973 and has spent long spells there ever since. He mixes Eastern and Western themes and symbolism in his work and his remarkable imagery combines the everyday with the exotic in a closely knit discourse.
The exhibition that will be presented in the Reykjavik Art Museum is entitled New Works, and presents over sixty works including paintings, pastels and watercolours, all of which have been made in the last three years. This follows his major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, (1999).
Francesco Clemente lives and works in New York, but spends some time each year in Madras, India and in Rome, Italy. The exhibition New Works is a joint project of the Reykjavik Art Museum and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. Most of the works in the exhibition come from the artist, but also from the Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich in Switzerland and the Gagosian Gallery in New York and various art collectors, who have generously lent works for the exhibition.
RONI HORN The American artist Roni Horn was born in New York in 1955 and has over the past few decades been a rising star in the international art world. She came to Iceland on her first trip abroad, in 1975 and has been a regular visitor ever since. Roni Horn looks upon Iceland as her second home and has made a vast number of friends and acquaintances all around the country.
In Roni Horn’s mind, Iceland is a certain counterbalance to the New York metropolis – and now, after a relationship lasting almost 30 years, she considers her visits here necessary to perserve balance in her life. Her work relates to Iceland first and foremost through photographs and text, and in various published books. The series To Place now numbers eight books, all of which have Iceland as their focal point.
The indoor swimming pool Sundhollin i Reykjavik plays a leading role in a handful of Roni Horn’s works. This remarkable building, designed by architect Gudjon Samuelsson and built in 1929-37, is a great favourite of hers and she has photographed it in detail. In the work exhibited at the Reykjavik Art Museum, numerous photographs of the women’s changing room are assembled like parts of a quilt. They are put together in a way that reminds us of our fragmented perception of the environment, through an eye that blinks constantly. The mysterious labyrinth of the changing rooms is hard to understand in these pictures, as it is even for those who are physically there. Through the photographs, Roni shows us the relationship between doors, doorways and walls that are constantly changing, because as soon as one space closes, another opens.
