Roni Horn

A constellation of 24 glass columns containing water collected from ice from some of the major glaciers around Iceland. The glass columns refract and reflect the light onto a rubber floor embedded with a field of words in Icelandic and English which relate to the weather. The sculpture installation offers a space for private reflection whilst accommodating a wide variety of community uses.

Exhibition

Water, selected

After a lengthy period of research, Roni Horn realised Library of Water, equally known by its Icelandic title Vatnasafn: a long-term, multi-faceted installation in the small town of Stykkishólmur on the southwest coast of Iceland.

Within the converted building (originally constructed in 1950 as a small library), Horn has created a long-term installation which connects the inside to the outside and incorporates many of the Horn’s abiding concerns with weather, water, words and identities. The artist has described the place as “a lighthouse in which the viewer becomes the light”.

Where there was once a library of books, there is now a series of collections gathered by Horn and her collaborators in Iceland. These include Water, Selected, a constellation of identical floor-to-ceiling glass columns containing water originally gathered as blocks of ice from twenty-four glaciers across the country. All the glaciers have receded since the ice was collected and one of them, Ok, has now disappeared. 