INFERNO

Rebecca Horn ‘Emotion in Motion’ – Cragg Foundation, Wuppertal (Germany) – March 14 to August 30, 2026.

Dédiée à Rebecca Horn (1944-2024), l’une des plus grandes artistes allemandes du XXe siècle, cette rétrospective réunit treize installations et sculptures cinétiques de grande envergure, créées entre les années 1980 et 2010.

Durant six décennies de carrière, Horn a exploré les dimensions physiques et métaphysiques de l’être, du désir et de l’aspiration à travers des performances telles que Körperextensionen (Extensions corporelles), ainsi que des sculptures cinétiques, des peintures, des dessins, de la poésie, des films, des scénographies et des installations in situ. Sa pratique est unifiée par la récurrence de matériaux, d’éléments mécaniques et un équilibre symbolique entre le tangible et le poétique.

L’exposition présente des œuvres marquantes comme Turm der Namenlosen (Tour des sans-nom) (1994), une tour d’échelles de cueillette de fruits ornée de violons motorisés, évoquant les musiciens réfugiés à Vienne pendant les guerres de Yougoslavie. La Preußischen Brautmaschine (Machine à mariées prussiennes) (1988), machine à dessiner en dialogue avec le surréalisme et le ready-made ; Concert for Anarchy (2006), piano renversé mis en mouvement par des mécanismes pneumatiques ; et Hauchkörper (Corps respirants) (2017), la série la plus récente de Horn. Des œuvres intimistes inspirées par la nature, telles que Parrot Wings Blue (1993), sculpture motorisée en laiton animant délicatement des plumes d’oiseau pour imiter le vol, et Magic Rock (2005), qui s’ouvre périodiquement pour révéler un cristal caché, sont présentées à la Villa Waldfrieden.

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With the exhibition « Rebecca Horn. Emotion in Motion » opening March 2026, Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden presents a comprehensive solo exhibition of works by artist Rebecca Horn, who died in September 2024 (1944-2024). This retrospective brings together large-format installations and kinetic sculptures from over the course of four decades — showcasing the complex, multi-medial work of one of the most important German artists of the 20th century. The exhibition is the product of close cooperation with the Moontower Foundation, which Rebecca Horn founded in 2007 to manage and care for her artistic oeuvre after her death. The foundation’s mission is to foster artists and to keep Horn’s work alive by making it accessible to a broad audience.

Rebecca Horn was born in Michelstadt, in Germany’s southwestern Odenthal region, in 1944. Horn made her first body works while studying at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK). The toxicity of the production process, however, which involved making synthetic casts, poisoned the artist, leading to a long period of hospitalization. It was from this period of drawn out isolation that Rebecca Horn’s Körperextensionen (Body Extensions) arose: Objects, extensions of the human body that Horn presented during performances. It is here that the issues of the frailty, vulnerability and spatial limitations of human existence become a central focus of her work. Horn translated questions probing the physical and metaphysical circumstances of being, of longing and desire, into kinetic objects, paintings, graphic works, poetry, film and performance, on stage sets or in site-specific installations. Created over six decades, the works of Horn’s oeuvre are connected by their materials, mechanisms and functions, or through the reuse of individual elements, becoming one on a symbolic level through the balance of the material and the poetic.

The exhibition at Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden features thirteen works that Rebecca Horn made between the 1980s and the 2010s; among them, large-scale kinetic sculptures whose mechanical structures create sounds.

Rebecca Horn’s works have been exhibited around the world. At documenta 5 in 1972, Horn showed her Körperextensionen (Body Extensions) for the first time. In 1993, she became the first woman ever given a retrospective at New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Horn was also the recipient of numerous international honors and awards, among the most recent: Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture (Tokyo, 2010), Grande Médaille des Arts Plastiques (Paris, 2011), Orden Pour le Mérite for Art and Science (Berlin, 2016) and the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize (Duisburg, 2017).

Images: 1- Rebecca Horn, Concert for Anarchy, 2006, Kunstforum Wien, Installation View, © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2025 -2- Rebecca Horn, Kiss of the Rhinoceros, 1989 © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2026, Foto Gunter Lepkowski