Rebecca Horn

Artist
Rebecca Horn
Attraction
Love Thermometer
Born
1944 Michelstadt, Germany - 2024 Bad König, Germany

Horn was known for performances featuring prosthetics and sculptural extensions of bodily features, and installations with found objects and animated machines.

Her work frequently explored the boundaries of the human body and physical sensation.

Her kinetic sculptures used technology to animate everyday objects in unexpected ways.

Rebecca Horn.

Fairground View: Rebecca Horn, Love Thermometer to measure emotions, exhibited 1987.

Rebecca Horn created sculptures, performances, installations, and films that explore the relationship between the human body and the world it inhabits, both organic and man-made. This exploration began in 1968 when Horn contracted a lung condition that forced her to stop using sculptural materials like fiberglass and polyester. A subsequent period of hospitalization inspired a series of sculptures made from soft textile materials, reminiscent of bandages and prosthetic limbs.

Rebecca Horn.

Fairground View: Rebecca Horn, Love Thermometer to measure emotions, exhibited 1987.

These experiments led to the creation of wearable structures made of wood, metal, and fabric in the 1970s. For example, Horn added meter-long protheses to her fingers, or attached a mask of pencils to her head, forming fairytale-esque extensions to her own body that blended fantasy and reality in the performances that she filmed. In the following years, Horn made kinetic sculptures and installations bringing ordinary objects to life, such as mechanized trembling spoons, fluttering suitcases, or her iconic sculpture of two rhinoceros’ horns that meet in an electric kiss.

Horn created sculptures, performances, installations, and films that explore the relationship between the human body and the world it inhabits.

Rebecca Horn created a lover’s thermometer for Luna Luna, a functioning thermometer that marks a range of emotions, such as “solitude,” “tenderness,” and “longing.” The thermometer is filled with blood-red liquid that sits in the globe at room temperature and rises up the stem in response to heat. Audience members held the thermometer to receive a “diagnosis” in response to their degree of body warmth.

Forgotten Fantasy

Now open at the shed, nyc

Thirty-seven years ago, Luna Luna landed in Hamburg, Germany: the world’s first art amusement park with rides, games, and attractions by visionaries like Basquiat, Haring, Lichtenstein and Hockney. By a twist of fate, the park’s treasures were soon sealed in 44 shipping containers and forgotten in Texas — until now.