Rebecca Horn show opens in Moscow

A selection of 35 artworks including a new kinetic installation by German artist and filmmaker Rebecca Horn will be on display at the Moscow Multimedia Art Museum until mid-July. The new installation, The Suitcase of a Refugee (2012), will be shown alongside a body of work that spans the artist’s career including video documentation of her early performances, alongside full-length films, installation art and sculpture.

Horn’s work explores self-perception, the relationship between the animate and the inanimate, and the limits of the human body, an interest that emerged in the late Sixties after prolonged stays in hospital and sanatoriums following a serious illness. “In [her] work … we witness an almost alchemical transformation of the body: amplified with horns, feathers and wings, it turns into the body of a mythological creature,” says Sergio Edelstein, a curator that contributed one of the texts to a book accompanying the exhibition.

The exhibition further reveals Horn’s preoccupation with inanimate objects which are given the same prominence as people in her work. Throughout her work, humans exhibit automatic behaviour and often come to resemble machines, hence her lifelong fascination with deadpan comic actor Buster Keaton.

The show will run until 21 July.