Rebecca Horn at the Haus der Kunst

Haus der Kunst in Munich is dedicating a major retrospective to the artist Rebecca Horn. The exhibition offers an overview of the renowned artist’s life’s work spanning six decades.

Rebecca Horn, born in Michelstadt in the Odenwald in 1944, studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg in the 1960s. In 1971, a scholarship took her to London to study at St. Martin’s School of Art. A year later she went to New York, where she lived until 1981. During this time she commuted between New York and Berlin. In addition to her artistic activities, she also taught at the California Art Institute, the University of San Diego and the University of the Arts in Berlin, where she held a professorship until 2010.
The artist can look back on an impressive career and took part in Documenta 5 at the age of 28.

Newly digitized film footage of Rebecca Horn’s early work forms the focus and at the same time the prelude to the exhibition. In Performances I (1972) and II (1973), Rebecca Horn explores the controllability and extension of the body, using wearable constructions made of cotton and metal to evoke strange sensations. The surrounding spaces move away from the main space “like extensions”, as the curator of the exhibition Jana Baumann explains, referring to the fact that the artist describes her early performances as “body extensions”. Head Extension (1972) and Unicorn (1970-72), which Rebecca Horn showed at Documenta 5 in Kassel, can also be seen in the exhibition.
In her early work, she also dedicated herself to the power of transformation by approaching and living out different identities. She creates works that show a dual nature of human and animal, playing with masks, bandages and animal feathers that are used in her actions, thus offering various possibilities for association. In her works, she often eludes social classifications and gender categories. This is also given special consideration in the exhibition. The medium of film is an important medium for her. Dance, especially ballet, is a recurring motif in her early works.

Her work is also dedicated to the theme of war and ties in with Adorno’s statement that writing a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric (1951). The site-specific works Konzert für Buchenwald. Part 1 Straßenbahndepot (1999) and Konzert für Buchenwald. Part 2 Schloß Ettersburg (1999) serve to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust with dignity. But it is also dedicated to the victims of more recent wars. The Tower of the Nameless from 1994, for example, refers to the victims of the post-Yugoslavian wars. The work Inferno, in which hospital beds are stacked up to 14 meters high, through which a flash of electric light is directed. The work visually depicts the madness of suffering. It is an immersive spatial installation by Rebecca Horn typical of the 1990s.
The collapse of many ecosystems is also part of her work. The work Circle for Broken Landscape (1997) highlights the consequences that human activity has on the environment. It refers to the subjugation and exploitation of nature and also the relationship between humans and animals. At the same time, it also illustrates the human urge to control everything. Later works by Rebecca Horn can also be discovered in the exhibition. For example, Hauchkörper from 2017 is her last major group of works.

The artist’s oeuvre comprises many works that are difficult to survey, but the curators Jana Baumann and Radia Soukni have succeeded in doing so. One theme runs like a red thread through the artist’s work, namely that of man and his relationship to nature, culture, technology and the human and non-human, which the curators have also taken up. Many of the works on display in the exhibition were created by the artist or have been loaned by major institutions such as the Tate.
The exhibition opens on April 26 and runs until October 13.

Photos: Exhibition views at
Haus der Kunst Munich
Photo: Markus Tretter
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024