Roni Horn, no title

Roni Horn, no title from Still Water (The River Thames, for Example), 1999, fifteen offset lithographs, each 30 1/2 x 41 1/2".

Some Thames is literally the idea of a finite thing having an infinite range of appearance or expression because of its inseparable relation to other things, which is what water is — its relation to other things.

When I look at water I’m entering into an event of relation. Rather than an object, water becomes a form — of consciousness, or time, of physicality, of the human condition, of anything I desire to project on it, of anything I want it to be.

This water exists in monolithic, indivisible continuity with all other waters. No water is separate from any other water.

In the River Thames, in an Arctic iceberg, in your drinking glass, in that drop of rain, on that frosty window pane, in your eyes, in every other microscopic part of you (and me), all waters converge.

Invisible continuity is intrinsic to water. This continuity exceeds us even while being the biggest part of us. It’s this continuity that makes our effect on water an effect on us. That is to say: “I am the Thames!” or “The Thames is me!”

—Roni Horn for Pulitzer Arts.

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