Nasher Sculpture Center Announces Roni Horn

First American museum exhibition of artist’s large-scale glass sculptures

Dallas, Texas (March 20, 2017) – The Nasher Sculpture Center announces its 2017 summer show Roni Horn, featuring large scale, cast glass works by the American artist. The exhibition will be on view May 20 – August 20, 2017.

Encompassing sculpture, drawing, collage, photography, and artist’s books, Roni Horn (b.1955) has created a rich body of work over nearly four decades that has already left a significant mark on contemporary art. Sculpture is an important aspect of Horn’s oeuvre, and the artist frequently includes three-dimensional works in her photography and drawing installations. For her Nasher show, eight large-scale cylindrical cast glass sculptures of varying colors will occupy the museum’s main gallery. It will be the artist’s first U.S. museum presentation of her work since 2010 and the first to focus specifically on her cast glass sculpture. 

“Roni Horn is one of those rare artists that can carry the vocabulary of many mediums with equal aplomb, always with mesmerizing efficiency and sharp intelligence,” says Director Jeremy Strick. “Her projects related to language, the body, and place encourage a thoughtfulness akin to contemplation, and these large glass sculptures are no exception. Though physically heavy, the seductive translucence and polished surfaces of these solid glass works’ tease our powers of perception, suggesting uncanny liquid depths and challenging us to be ever more present to experience.”

Horn began making cast glass sculptures in the early 1990s. Created through a labor- and time-intensive process, the works require three to four months to complete. With their abstract forms and industrial fabrication processes, her sculptures often borrow from the visual language of Minimalism, though Horn imbues her work with personal meaning and references that distance it from the strict autonomy characteristic of Minimalist sculpture. Her work instead acts as a critical bridge connecting Minimalism and Post-Minimalism of the 1960s and 1970s to contemporary art-making practices today. Within the Nasher galleries, her sculptures will be infused with light, calling attention not only to their volumetric forms, but also the reflective and translucent qualities of glass. The works in Roni Horn defy traditional definitions of glass art, expanding the genre into the realm of sculpture laden with weight and presence.