BARCELONA.- The artist Roni Horn (New York, 1955) has been chosen by the jury as the winner of the fourth edition of the Joan Miró Prize, one of the most prestigious awards and largest cash prizes granted in the world. Horn will receive the award in a ceremony due to take place on Wednesday January 30 at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.

The international jury at the fourth edition of the Joan Miró Prize unanimously opted to grant the prize to Roni Horn, one of the most unique, multi-faceted artists of contemporary creation. The artist from New York was awarded the prize on account of her zeal to “explore new dimensions and horizons” which, according to the jury, the artist “shares with Joan Miró”. Accordingly, Horn has become the fourth winner of an award jointly organised by the Fundació Joan Miró and Obra Social ”la Caixa” which will be presented on January 30 in a ceremony to be held at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. Aside from the cash prize of 70,000 euros and the award, a monographic exhibition of Horn’s work will be presented at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona in spring 2014 and subsequently at CaixaForum in Madrid.

The jury’s decision: “an oeuvre that, like Miró’s, is endlessly open” On awarding the prize, the jury gave consideration to aspects such as innovation and freedom of creation, values that characterise the life and work of Joan Miró. The jury opted to award the prize to Horn deeming that the New York artist “has not ceased to impress international audiences with a multifaceted artistic practice that links aspects of nature, the landscape, popular culture, as well as other subjects related to materiality, with the mechanics of perception and communication. Horn is an artist that has authored an elusive work that, like Miró’s, is endlessly open, does not discriminate between media, and has a special focus on place and placement, as well as on drawing as a process and a compass. It is for these important points in common with the work of Joan Miró that the jury is unanimous in awarding this prize to Roni Horn”.

The jury for the 2013 Joan Miró Prize was formed by highly prominent professionals from the field of contemporary art: Alfred Pacquement, director of the Musée national d’art moderne-Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris); Vicent Todolí, former director of the Tate Modern (London); Poul Erik Tøjner, director of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Louisiana); Rosa Maria Malet, director of the Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona); and Nimfa Bisbe, director of the Fundació ”la Caixa” Contemporary Art Collection.

30 January – the award ceremony
Aside from receiving a cash prize of 70,000 euros and being invited to exhibit her work in the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and in CaixaForum in Madrid in 2014, Horn will also receive an award conceived by acclaimed designer André Ricard. The spirit and identity of Joan Miró and the Foundation were the inspiration for this award that captures the desire for innovation and the dynamic spirit of the prize and of the artist whose name it bears. The award will be presented to the winner along with a certificate at a special event to be held at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona on Wednesday 30 January.

Visual power
If diversity, multiplicity and fusion constitute the flagship of contemporaneity, Horn is clearly a contemporary artist in the full sense of the phrase. As a sculptor, designer, photographer, writer or artist focussing on specific works and on the landscape, Horn’s curiosity is as all-encompassing as her energy, and her talents have been borne out in so many fields of art that defining her is a complex task. Immersed in the fields of conceptual art and minimalism, the label that can best be attached to her is simply that of visual artist and writer. Visual, often a superfluous adjective, is more than fitting in the case of Horn: her work is powerfully visual, a strength she lends to intellectual discourse seeking to raise awareness among the public around issues such as gender, identity, androgyny, and the complex relationship between subject and object.

A keen portrait and landscape artist, a devout sculptor and with a penchant for design, Horn dedicates herself to a creative work providing both powerful and melancholic results. Her fondness for Iceland, where she lives and works for some of the year, helps us to understand a perspective which rests on harshness and simplicity, on forcefulness and on the delicate, the absolute and the melancholic. She focuses on exploring the extent to which the world is changing, unstable, unsafe, uncertain and mysterious. Landscapes, individuals, time and works of art move, evolve and are conditioned by context. The artist even considers our identity and perception of who we are to be unstable: it depends on a specific place and moment in time; hence, she has a zeal for working with specific places in mind. Her art has been conceived to occupy a specific place.