“I always think of everything in terms of drawing,
and there’s definitely a drawing element in putting
together these visual relationships and composing these
objects in a space. It’s the many layers of relation
that make the work effective...”
“With most three-dimensional objects the relationship
to the space is somewhat fixed, and here it isn’t.
As you walk around the grouping, these images are coming
and going, you’re seeing some and others are dropping
out. All of that has to be composed.”
“Aside from the physical, sensual reality of water,
the thing that I love is its paradoxical nature. …I
never intended to have water in everything I do…but
I almost feel like I rediscover it again and again.”
There’s a new
element in "Doubt by Water," what is it?
HORN:
"Doubt by Water" is
a form
that I’ve been thinking about for a while. It starts
with a two-faced image. That’s really the core of the
whole work...getting a two-faced image (which is more or less
like an object) into a meaningful relationship to space, and
the form with the stanchions in relationship to the architecture
and flow-through. It was an interesting kind of balance to
hold together the many pieces going throughout an architectural
setting—and the river, the glacial water, which is the
gray surface, is a kind of cohesive link.
I think that image, or that way of shooting water, was very
much influenced by "Some Thames" and some of my
other works from London where you just kind of get the surface
of the water, its relationship to the weather and light. Then
the other side was various motifs
that have occurred in different forms in other works. One
is the young person—a kind of a portrait—and repetition
with a slightly different nuance throughout a space. And you’ve
got the ice, the birds, the faces of the birds, the portrait.
ART:21:
What about the birds?
HORN:
They were stuffed birds.
ART:21:
Where did you find them?
HORN:
This all started when I was shooting
a piece called "PI," which was completed in 1997-1998.
I went and photographed the collections in Reykjavik of stuffed
animals and specifically was working with the indigenous animals
of Iceland. And those were intended to be part of "PI,"
but of course I wound up photographing extensively and other
things came out of it. I’ve amassed this rather large
archive of images from Iceland over the last fifteen or twenty
years. A lot of it’s just taken with no intention on
my part or with lost intentions, something like that. So none
of the material you see here was ever used before, but it
was taken back in 1991. And the portrait is very recent, 2002.
ART:21:
So you created a vast image bank?
HORN:
Unintentionally I have a collected
a lot of material. By unintentionally I mean the idea wasn’t
to have a large image bank, but nevertheless I have one now.
So I fall back on that. When I was putting this work together
I knew that I wanted disparate motifs coming together—it
was very particular what would work and what wouldn’t.
I had actually gone to Iceland to photograph specifically
for this piece and none of that material was acceptable to
me. So I fell back on this archive and I guess it’s
also a kind of a memory thing, because it’s all, in
a way, a history. But that’s not really part of the
piece, I don’t think.
ART:21:
What do you mean by not part
of the piece?
HORN:
I don’t think it’s
important to a viewer that these images were taken over a
ten-year period. I don’t think it is interesting to
the piece in any way, that’s just how I work. Often
the objective is not clear for years after the act. It’s
a very odd way to work, it’s a little bit backwards,
but it’s how I do it.
ART:21:
Talk about how this work relates
to drawing.
HORN:
I always think of everything
in terms of drawing, and there’s definitely a drawing
element in putting together these visual relationships and
composing these objects in a space. It’s the many layers
of relation that make the work effective.
When you see "Doubt By Water" as a group, it’s
sort of operating as an object. But as you use it to pull
someone through space, it functions more like an image, an
icon.
So the piece flickers between a three-dimensional experience
and a kind of two-dimensional image. I really wouldn’t
know how to describe what this work is. But it has a very
particular way of moving the viewer through space and through
image space, which is very different than architectural space.
ART:21:
Describe how you set this up.
HORN:
"Doubt by Water" is
intended to be installed throughout a building. Starting from
the entrance—which is always a pivotal spot in terms
of the development of an experience—I would move "Doubt
by Water" throughout this space, using transition spaces,
the halls, that kind of thing. And then perhaps a little pooling,
grouping of doubt, occasionally. It’s moving between
this signage to the object installation.
It’s interesting in the sense that I notice when I’m
installing, it’s very hard to install because it’s
viewable from every angle. With most three-dimensional objects
the relationship to the space is somewhat fixed, and here
it isn’t. As you walk around the grouping, these images
are coming and going, you’re seeing some and others
are dropping out. All of that has to be composed. I guess
I was surprised at how complex that was, I thought that would
be a little bit easier.
ART:21:
Talk about that.
HORN:
It acknowledges the body and
it acknowledges the eye. With photographs you’re not
dealing with the presence of the figure, the viewer as a body,
you’re really dealing with the eye. But sculpture’s
dealing the physical presence as well.
ART:21:
Say more about the water in "Doubt
by Water."
HORN:
Aside from the physical, sensual
reality of water, the thing that I love is its paradoxical
nature. Water is something one’s attracted to largely
for the light...I never intended to have water in everything
I do...but I almost feel like I rediscover it again and again.
It just finds its way back into new work.
ART:21:
What are some examples of its
paradoxical nature?
HORN:
Water is a very dependent form.
Is completely dependent. Its shape is determined by things
not water—whether it’s a river or a glass. So
you have this essential material that is entirely dependent
on its neighborhood and its neighbors. It’s also an
extremely tolerant form, meaning that it’s a solvent
for many things. So everything finds its way into water. And
water can still be water and accommodate a lot of different
presences.
The big paradox is, "How does it still keep its transparency?"
That’s what I’ve wondered about. The water you
drink, who knows how many times it’s been around the
world, and its appearance is still wildly constant. Obviously
it’s dependent on light and weather and all of these
things. But water in the glass looks like water half way around
the world. It’s pretty much identical.
So there is this interesting aspect of the constancy of water
and its multifarious expression—geologically and so
on. You have an identity that has an endlessly changing appearance.
Or you have an identity that has an endlessly constant appearance,
it has both of these things. I think of water as a verb, I
think of it as something one experiences in its relationship
to other things. Obviously I’m thinking about in Iceland
for example, the presence of water is so extensive and it’s
always circumstantial.
ART:21:
Can you talk about the project
where you photographed the Thames?
HORN:
The problem with that project
is that there are a dozen projects and I get them all confused.
The big project started out as an artist’s book, "Another
Water," which was the idea of shooting the surface of
the water as a continuous event and footnoting the entire
extent of it. So that’s how the book was laid out—bled
pages of the surface of the water taken over a one-year period.
ART:21:
When was that?
HORN:
That was when I was researching
the Thames river, I decided only to cover the central London
part of the river. Partly because of this very rich relationship
the city has to the river, the history, but also the daily
intercourse with it. All of the photographs in "Some
Thames," "Another Water," and "Still Water"
were photographed in central London.
And there is your paradox—that every photograph is wildly
different—even though you could be photographing the
same thing from one minute to the next. It’s almost
got the complexity of a portrait, something with a personality.
Of course the Thames is an especially beautiful river to photograph
because the weather here is so indecisive, it’s rarely
blue skies, which would be the least interesting light to
photograph water in. The Thames has this incredible moodiness,
and that’s what the camera picks up. It is also about
it being a tidal river, so it has these vertical changes and
it moves very quickly. It’s actually a very dangerous
river and you sense that just by looking at it.
I thought I would shoot the Seine or the Garonne, but these
rivers don’t have the same energy. I don’t know
how many people kill themselves in the Seine but it just didn’t
look like a convincing suicide route to me. The Thames has
the interesting fact attached to it that it is the urban river
with the highest appeal to foreign suiciders. So you get people
coming in from Paris to kill themselves in the Thames. So
it has an incredible draw and one of the points about shooting
the Thames was the fact that it’s darkness was quite
real—it wasn’t just a visual darkness, it was
a psychological darkness.
Water is something one’s attracted to largely for the
light aspect of it. And the banks along the Thames, a lot
of them are being restored or renovated and the view is on
this very dark water. There was this paradox, even in its
darkness it has this picturesque element. It’s something
about the human condition—not the water itself—humanity’s
relationship to water. So in the end it doesn’t make
a difference what the water looks like, it will always have
this kind of picturesque quality to it because that’s
almost a human need that water be a positive force.
ART:21:
And the installation of "Some
Thames" at The University of Iceland in Akuryeri?
HORN:
The idea is again to flow it
through, not only the building, but through the actual use
of this space. Someone using the building might take weeks
or months or years to ultimately discover the extent of the
work because it is throughout a complex of buildings and the
logic of it is kind of leveling. The various spaces are used
by different aspects of the university. One’s relationship
to a building is in this repetitive cycle, you walk down the
same hall and you go to the same bathroom and you exit and
enter the same way. Occasionally you stray out into other
parts of the building. And then as your relationship to the
space evolves more and more of the work is revealed.
I like the idea that the scale
of the work is unknown but pervasive. This is a work that
goes throughout the complex of buildings, not dominating it,
but setting a tone for the space. I am really not concerned
that students see it as art. It is a permanent installation,
meaning that person using the building will experience different
parts of the piece over the years that they spend there. So
that was the intention with "Some Thames," to have
eighty large photographs deployed throughout a social setting
like this. It’s almost too small, so I’m a little
concerned about that, but that’s an ideal setting for
the piece. As opposed to the Dia [Center for the Arts] where
they were hung in a traditional way—a four-wall installation
very tightly hung and you had about half the installation
there. That hanging had other qualities to it, but they weren’t
as interesting to me as setting up this dynamic with the viewer.
