Rough and smooth

These two objects by American artist Roni Horn were made by gradually pouring liquid glass into a mould for twenty-four hours and slowly allowing them to cool over a period of four months. The rough sides of the objects show the texture of the moulds. The tops are smooth and shiny, because here the glass has only been in contact with the air. Depending on the viewpoint, they sometimes appear as a razor-sharp surface, or conversely as an endless depth.

Solid or liquid?

In this work, Roni Horn plays with the ambiguous properties of glass. It is melted and then solidified again into an apparently permanent state, but it is essentially a liquid. With this game, Horn causes the observer to become confused: it is impossible to determine the ‘identity’ of the material with the naked eye and whether the inside of the sculpture is solid or liquid.

Doppelgangers

Opposites of White forms a pair. There is no hierarchy between the parts. The two elements, one black, the other white, have more in common than that they differ. In Horn’s view these objects are doppelgangers, opposites that both demonstrate the absence of colour, though white (light) actually contains all the colours.