Drawn/Taped/Burned: Abstraction on Paper » Joan Waltemath on Roni Horn

an overlap that creates scale

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:23:55 +0000

A slight elevation in the surface of the drawing occurs at the point where two pieces of paper overlap. The pigmented paper is dark, its shadow is subtle, and the raised form is only visible in a certain light. Situated directly above the torn-edged opening, which mirrors its form, the overlapping paper serves as a counterpoint to what looks like a sliver or a wedge, or maybe even a leg below. The slick hard cream white of the underlying support provides a stark contrast to the soft red paper and marks the moment where naked ground is made to serve as figure.

With this subtle undulation, the surface of the drawing can be read as a miniature landscape. To think about it in this way is to consider the minute shifts we might see if the drawing were rotated to a sectional view that revealed its surface properties, as if it were a scaled view of geological strata. It’s almost as if, as with sculptural form, the drawing is being turned in thought, so that the viewer can see how it looks from another angle.

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a radiance that penetrates

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:33:12 +0000

Sensations that exist in the life world not available through the Internet will become rarefied.

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a lineage that is hidden

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:32:56 +0000

In these works one can still feel the resonance of artist David Rabinowitch, with whom Horn was associated during her time at Yale. What she still shares with Rabinowitch is a realization that one can attain incredible precision, not only through a rational or logical approach but also through poetic form.

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a surface that expands

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:32:37 +0000

Opposition has a tendency to reveal the essential quality of a thing.
Here the velvety smooth surface of the pigments sedate, just as their red color excites. This pigmented field obscures the cuts that often appear, in Horn’s more accustomed articulations, where large areas of unmarked but smudged paper serve as a ground. In this drawing we find the inverse: the apparent figure is found in the sliver of unmarked paper revealed, rather than in a pigmented tomb or a block shape. The ground is a surface that expands.

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a technique that challenges Cubism

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:32:23 +0000

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an edge that is torn

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:32:08 +0000

Moving into the red—there is always a price to pay for realizations as well as for indulgences.

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a deep crevice that disappears in a field around it

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:31:53 +0000

The material—the way Horn has applied the pigment to create a kind of velvety surface—opens up a sensual realm that can move beyond words to communicate through a felt sense.

Sensations reverberate on levels where the mind is spinning its wheels. Simple and abundant as they are in daily life, events can also be hidden. A guide can serve to bring us along and to show us where one thing becomes another.

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a crack and an abyss

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:31:34 +0000

Leonard Cohen: There is a crack in everything and that’s where the light comes in.

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a wedge

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:31:17 +0000

A recurrence of form.

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a split

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:30:48 +0000

A tear is a tear is a tear, which, unlike a rose, is not bound to a singular sound. Whether read as a rip or a drip, there is a split that occurs in hearing, which allows for two meanings instead of one when moving T E A R from sight to sound. The opening, read as a form, but evidenced as a removal in revealing the ground, serves as a metaphor for the kinds of shifts that bring thought to mind and trigger realizations.

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