US artist Roni Horn has worked with words throughout her career, contrasting an often slick and highly modern body of sculptural work with fluid and detailed drawings that delve into language as a form of mark making. The sculptural drawings in Butterfly Doubt at Hauser & Wirth’s Savile Row galleries in London visualize language as a stream of consciousness, where lines intersect and layers of paper are piled up to conceal and reveal letters and words.
Three series of works are brought together in this exhibition, Or (2014), Hack Wit (2013 – 14), and Remembered Words (2013). While their are threads that run through all three series, each takes a varied approach with language.
In Hack Wit, Horn the words are impossible to miss, one word taking up an entire drawing, so large and sketchy that it becomes a form in itself. These words, fat and messily coloured, call to mind a child’s view of language, abstract and with letters still having to be apprehended as physical shapes.
In contrast to these are the many phrases scattered throughout the works of Or, such as famous names and film titles, written in Biro and only noticeable on close inspection. Here, words – e.g. ‘Joan Rivers’ – bring with them memories, hinted-at opinions and bits of cultural history. These references create a sense of odd misfit, where one small area of a work holds more definition than the rest of the entire piece.
Beyond singular words and phrases, Horn also considers our ordering of language. In the Remembered Words series she looks at our attempts to make sense of language through categorization, where some words are grouped by similar meaning, some by phonetic similarity and others by no apparent rhyme or reason at all. This eclectic categorization functions to confuse more than clarify, leaving a sense of strange chaos within the order.
En masse this is an intense look at a language that is both complicated and familiar. It is difficult to grasp as one clear definition – which is of course the point. Is language fluid or solid? And how can it hold us so certain one moment and appear so meaningless the next?
Butterfly Doubt is open to the public until 25th July 2015, at Hauser and Wirth, Savile Row.
All images: © Roni Horn, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Photo: Genevieve Hanson
