Throughout her career, Rebecca Horn has engaged in a form of art that crosses defined boundaries of specific visual languages. Her work encompasses performance, drawing, sculpture, installation, and film. Machines, quasi-anthropomorphic mechanical devices, are essential components of many of her creations. Their movements and interactions create a disturbing theater—often configured to mirror the defined space of human relationships—within which obsession, desire, and power relationships are protagonists.
In Cutting Through the Past, 1993, five doors that bear the signs of time are installed on a platform. Their humble nature suggests a domestic environment, within which private stories unfold. A pointed metal rod is positioned horizontally at the center of the platform. Activated by an electronic motor, the rod completes a 360-degree rotation, touching each of the doors and carving its tip into them with a light but cruel gesture. Rich in erotic implications, the movement also evokes a situation marked by conflict, in which the relationship between the parts in play implies their progressive destruction.
In Miroir du Lac (Mirror of the Lake), 2004, Horn draws visitors into her own mechanical universe, capturing the image of each visitor who approaches. The work consists of two circular mirrors, one installed on the floor, the other on the ceiling, producing an effect of infinite depth. The totality suggests a well, symbolically extended upward and downward. A metaphor for the cosmos in many traditions and cultures, the well summarizes the different orders of sky, earth and underworld, presenting itself as a means of communication among them. An ideal source of life, the well seals the union between water, earth, and air. A holder of secrets, it is also an image of knowledge and truth. The horizontally pivoted movement of the mirror installed on the floor produces a perceptual vertigo, overturning the secure geometry that is otherwise provided by ceiling and floor into its dynamic opposite.

[M.B.]

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  Arte Povera International

  curated by Germano Celant and Beatrice Merz From 9 October, 2011, the Castello di Rivoli will be presenting its own contribution to Germano Celant’s ambitious curatorial project: Arte Povera 2011. The exhibition at the Castello di Rivoli, Arte Povera International,…

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  Everything is connected 2

  curated by Beatrice Merz Castello di Rivoli presents tutto è connesso 2, a new installation of the permanent collection, in continuity with the broader redefinition of the spaces that were set aside for the previous tutto è connesso show. The…

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  Everything is connected. Research and investigations into art of the past decade through the collection

  curated by Beatrice Merz tutto è connesso, the exhibition on the first and second floors of Castello di Rivoli, was conceived as a way of establishing a critical presentation based on works in the permanent collection, which will then result…

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  From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel (Part I)

  Curated by Marcella Beccaria    A force that can alter the course of history, the voyage constitutes a richly symbolic territory, capable of assuming many forms and bringing together multiple meanings. From nomadism to migrations, from mythological adventures to pilgrimages,…

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  Il logos del corpo vivente

  Curated by Gudrun Inboden The female presence in culture and society in recent years is clearly more evident compared to past decades. Women artists, who were considered a minority only a short time ago, now significantly define the panorama of…

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  Arte & Arte

  Curated by Ida Gianelli How should we account for the plurality of art, a mode of expression loaded with possibilities whose very purpose is to question the nature of things? And how should museums and galleries deal with these contradictions:…

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  Ouverture

  The Castello di Rivoli’s first exhibition was conceived as a blueprint for the permanent collection, focusing on pivotal moments in contemporary art. The aim was to provide a broad, inclusive survey of living artists, many of whom were invited by…