HAMBURG.- On the occasion of the 5th Triennale of Photographie in Hamburg, the Hamburger Kunsthalle shows the exhibition Roni Horn. Photographic Works. New Yorker Roni Horn (*1955) is one of the world’s most renowned artists. Living alternately in New York and in Iceland she has been exhibiting internationally for over 30 years. Following her big solo exhibitions in 2009 at Tate Modern, London, and at Whitney Museum, New York, the Hamburg show presents her photographs for the first time in a solo exhibition in Germany.

Horn is best known for her staged paring of pictures or objects, usually in the form of a series. One of the most important areas of focus is the theme of our concept of identity. Examples of this approach can be seen in her portrait photographs You are the Weather (1994-95): A total of 100 close-ups of a young woman’s face as she bathes in a hot spring in Iceland. Seen against the brilliant blue of the water, the portraits have an extraordinary presence that never fails to captivate the viewer.

Besides the portraits, another reoccurring motif in the artists’ work is water. Horn’s series Some Thames (2000) shows 80 views of the River Thames in London. The multifaceted and ambivalent qualities of water are made explicit in the different colours and moods on the variable surfaces of the water. The fascination with this element hovers between the menacing and familiar, in the fact that it, as the artist says, “presents itself again and again as inscrutable and will forever remain unknown to us.”

The exhibition includes eleven series containing over 300 works, many of which are on loan from numerous museums in Germany and abroad.