An evocative chronicle of the power of solitude in the natural world I'm often asked, but have no idea why I chose Iceland, why I first started going, why I still go. In truth I believe Iceland chose me.--from the introduction Contemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island's treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn's creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, Island Zombie distills the artist's lifelong experience of Iceland's natural environment. Together, these pieces offer an unforgettable exploration of the indefinable and inescapable force of remote, elemental places, and provide a sustained look at how an island and its atmosphere can take possession of the innermost self. Island Zombie is a meditation on being present. It vividly conveys Horn's experiences, from the deeply profound to the joyful and absurd. Through powerful evocations of the changing weather and other natural phenomena--the violence of the wind, the often aggressive birds, the imposing influence of glaciers, and the ubiquitous presence of water in all its variety--we come to understand the author's abiding need for Iceland, a place uniquely essential to Horn's creative and spiritual life. The dramatic surroundings provoke examinations of self-sufficiency and isolation, and these ruminations summon a range of cultural companions, including El Greco, Emily Dickinson, Judy Garland, Wallace Stevens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Morris, and Rachel Carson. While brilliantly portraying nature's sublime energy, Horn also confronts issues of consumption, destruction, and loss, as the industrial and man-made encroach on Icelandic wilderness. Filled with musings on a secluded region that perpetually encourages a sense of discovery, Island Zombie illuminates a wild and beautiful Iceland that remains essential and new.

Island Zombie: Iceland Writings

Arts & Photography

Horn, Roni

History & Criticism

Princeton University Press

Review\n"'Iceland was the only place I went without cause, just to be there,' the New York-based artist Roni Horn writes in Island Zombie, her attempt to explain her powerful affinity for the country. Pieced together from decades of essays, interviews, poetry and photographs, Horn's latest book is a reflection on the complex beauty of a place that she continues to return to "with migratory insistence and regularity."---Chris Allnutt, Financial Times\n"A wonderful, beguiling read in which Roni takes us deep into her experience of Iceland."---Ben Luke, The Art Newspaper, A Brush With . . .\n"Island Zombie is a distillation of vignettes and essays on the natural and built environment (swimming pools are as much of a presence here as waterfalls), illustrated with the artist’s photographs. Often occupying no more than half a page, these fragmentary glimpses and reflections are indeed like “soil samples”, archived in an elegantly uncluttered volume that evokes Iceland’s forlorn emptiness as much as its places and people."---Nancy Campbell, Times Literary Supplement\n"Brilliant. . . . Prosaic and profound, [Island Zombie] felt like standing before art again."---Bridget Quinn, Hyperallergic\n"Sensually arresting . . . eloquent. . . . The first sections of the book will stoke the desire for a more in-depth study of Iceland; the others will interest veteran Iceland-watchers." ― Kirkus Reviews\n"Island Zombie is a thoughtful reflection on isolation, resilience, natural wonder, and living in the moment. Written by the contemporary artist Roni Horn, it’s the sort of book you find yourself returning to often ― to ponder, to explore, and to be inspired. In fact, this book is more like an art project that you want to page through at random than a straightforward “travelogue.” Not only does it venture deep into the author’s obsession with Iceland, but it has something unique to say about why humans love to travel in the first place."---Steve Bramucci, UPROXX\n"At times quiet and at times chaotic, Island Zombie captures the incorporeality of a nation that embodies the evanescence of the northern lights and the ephemerality of fumarole vapor... The book is an artistic tribute to... the diminishing nowhereness of which Iceland, indistinct in its bleak high latitudes, so definitively represents."---Brendan Curtinrich, Split Rock Review\n"Roni Horn’s Island Zombie turns boredom into an asset…a chance to recharge and reflect."---Jean Bundy, Anchorage Press\nAn evocative chronicle of the power of solitude in the natural world\nI’m often asked, but have no idea why I chose Iceland, why I first started going, why I still go. In truth I believe Iceland chose me.―from the introduction\nContemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island’s treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn’s creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, Island Zombie distills the artist’s lifelong experience of Iceland’s natural environment. Together, these pieces offer an unforgettable exploration of the indefinable and inescapable force of remote, elemental places, and provide a sustained look at how an island and its atmosphere can take possession of the innermost self.\nIsland Zombie is a meditation on being present. It vividly conveys Horn’s experiences, from the deeply profound to the joyful and absurd. Through powerful evocations of the changing weather and other natural phenomena―the violence of the wind, the often aggressive birds, the imposing influence of glaciers, and the ubiquitous presence of water in all its variety―we come to understand the author’s abiding need for Iceland, a place uniquely essential to Horn’s creative and spiritual life. The dramatic surroundings provoke examinations of self-sufficiency and isolation, and these ruminations summon a range of cultural companions, including El Greco, Emily Dicki

This accompanying catalogue to largest exhibition of Matthew Barney’s extraordinary drawings to date explores this central aspect of the artist’s important body of work. Drawing has always been an incredibly important part of Matthew Barney’s practice: his first major work—completed while still at Yale Art School—involved him creating a wall drawing while harnessed to the ceiling of his studio. In this exhibition and accompanying catalogue, one hundred of the artist’s most important drawings are presented from his major series of works—including “The Cremaster Cycle,” “The Drawing Restraint” series, and most notably “Ancient Evenings,” the body of work that has occupied the artist in the last few years (and is based on Norman Mailer’s ancient Egyptian-inspired novel of the same name). This exhibition and catalogue also represent a unique collaboration between the artist and the august Morgan Library, in which he was invited by the institution to mine their extensive holdings in order to include objects (drawings, manuscripts, etc.) in the installation of his work, to create an interesting framework around the many ideas the artist is exploring. In addition to a major essay by curator Klaus Kertess, who considers the many themes the artist draws from, the book includes a poetic contribution by artist Roni Horn and an insightful text by Adam Phillips, noted psychoanalyst.

Subliming Vessel: The Drawings of Matthew Barney

Kertess,klaus

Phillips, Adam.

Skira/Rizzoli

A comprehensive look at the celebrated work of contemporary artist Horn, whose innovative exploration of water as a medium and metaphor has established her as a vital voice in the discourse on identity, perception, and the environment.\nThis book is a captivating exploration of Horn’s decades-long fascination with water, both as a material and a metaphor. Known for her provocative approach to perception, identity, and the mutability of form, Horn uses water to mirror human experience and emotion. Born in 1955 in New York, Horn has spent decades pushing the boundaries of art to explore the complexities of identity, perception, and nature.\nHorn’s body of work spans photography, cast glass, and installation, consistently returning to the theme of fluidity. Her iconic series You Are the Weather—100 photographs of Icelandic artist Margrét Haraldsdóttir Blöndal submerged in water—reveals how water can both obscure and define identity. Similarly, her “liquid” glass sculptures play with the tension between solidity and fluidity, their colors ranging from turquoise to black. In an era marked by climate change and water scarcity, Horn’s works pose urgent questions about water as a shared resource and a symbol of impermanence and survival.\nThis volume not only offers a retrospective of her water-centered works but also connects them to broader global challenges with critical and poetic texts by Nora Burnett Abrams, Jarrett Earnest, Anne Carson, and the artist herself.

Roni Horn: Water Water On the Wall, You’re the Fairest of Them All

Carson, Anne

Earnest, Jarrett

Burnett Abrams, Nora

Rizzoli Electa

Roni Horn: Inner Geography

Individual Artists

Baltimore Museum of Art

Roni Horn: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Museum of Contemporary Art

Roni Horn: To Place : Folds

Distributed Art Pub Inc

Roni Horn: To Place : Lava

LOG (March 22, 2019–May 17, 2020), produced daily over a period of fourteen months, is a collection of drawings, quotations, collages, photographs, casual commentaries, notes on news and weather events, and original texts by Roni Horn. Known for conceptually oriented work in diverse media, Horn continues her exploration of identity and difference in LOG.\nThe collection, with its 406 drawings, ranges from the humorous and strange to the sublime and disturbed. Lodged in this context is the complexity of daily, lived experience.\nThe dates LOG records encompass the mundane scroll of life, the global pandemic’s early days, a political system in breakdown, local bird and animal life, and radical changes in weather. It also includes more formal texts and drawings, some becoming leitmotifs threaded throughout the work.\nLOG transforms personal experience into an emotionally profound and unusual visual engagement. First exhibited in New York City in early 2021, this is a beguiling and immersive body of work that invites repeated viewing.

Log: March 22, 2019 - May 17, 2020

ZE Books

Roni Horn: Gurgles, Sucks, Echoes.  Text by Lynne Tillman.  1995. Wraps. 38 color plates. 86 pages.

Roni Horn: Gurgles, Sucks, Echoes.

TILLMAN, Lynne

Matthew Marks

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