Agua Viva: Seventeen Paradoxes

Book excerpt: Roni Horn's remarkable body of work continues to communicate how she imaginatively inhabits the world and combines a careful study of the role of language in perception. Horn's unique ability to engage the viewer with a vivid sense of time and place in her range of sculptures, books, drawings and photographic installations, provide an active pursuit of self-revelation and the transience of form. For Horn's exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London in 2004, the entire floorplan of the main gallery was given over to the installation of Rings of Lispector. Consisting of interconnecting rubber tiles, the work is inlaid with select passages from Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector's book Agua VivaStream of Life). Translated by Hélène Cixous, phrases appear on the floor in circular arrangements, echoing the movement of raindrops on the surface of water. The work embodies a sense of the dialectic between architectural space and poetic force, encouraging one to experience the rubber physically underfoot and to view the words from above. This act of location addresses inner emotions with the idea of landscape.