Roni Horn's 'Seizure of Hope' Opens at Hauser & Wirth London

Roni Horn's first solo exhibition in London in a decade, 'Seizure of Hope,' is now on view at Hauser & Wirth on Savile Row. The show features 80 graphite and wax pencil drawings repeating the phrase 'I am paralysed with hope,' a line Horn adopted from comedian Maria Bamford's 2020 routine. The phrase also titles her 2023 exhibition at Centro Botin in Santander. Horn describes the drawings as 'an endless silent scream feeling,' created during what she calls the 'political downfall of America.' The exhibition includes a solid cast glass sculpture titled 'What Happens to the Hole When the Cheese is Gone?' (after Bertolt Brecht), a medium Horn has worked with since the 1990s. Horn, 70, was recently removed from a US flight after a dispute with a steward, an incident she relates to her experience as an androgynous person in Trump's America. The artist lives on an island in Maine. The installation is intuitive, with uneven gaps between frames. Horn's work is known for mirroring, doubling, and repetition, and she values ambiguity and humour, which she feels critics often overlook. The phrase 'I am paralysed with hope' first appeared in her conceptual diary 'LOG,' made over 14 months during lockdown. Horn also recounts a motorcycle accident in Iceland where she drove into a lake, an experience she links to the exhibition's themes of near-misses and resilience.