June 21 – October 4, 2009
Marine love, terrestrial love, celestial love: this is the trilogy of amorous feeling and aesthetic emotion that the great American artist Roni Horn invites us to explore in this huge summer retrospective occupying all the rooms of the Collection Lambert’s mansion and the main hall of the former railway depot in Arles, as part of the ‘Rencontres internationales de la Photographie’.
Roni Horn cites Emily Dickinson as a reference that has become a leitmotiv in her work, as has her dear departed friend – her celestial love – the great artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Iceland, the artist’s second home, her new nest and open-air studio, halfway between marine and terrestrial love.
A rarely seen, discreet and highly respected artist, mysterious and yet widely admired, she had exhibited twice in Paris, once at the ARC/Paris Museum of Modern Art in 1999, then in 2004 in the Cabinet des dessins at the National Museum of Modern Art. Roni Horn is skilled not only in the art of photography, but also in sculpture and drawings which almost take the form of huge paintings.
This is the most extensive exhibition of her work ever organized, featuring over 120 works, most of which have never been shown in France. The Collection Lambert has been supported by major institutions which have been able to secure the loan of works that are rarely seen because they are so fragile or difficult to move: the Tate Modern in London, which hosted the show in spring 2009, then (following the stint in Avignon) the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and finally the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.