Vincent Borrelli, Bookseller

Roni Horn: Pooling Waters (Ísland (Iceland): To Place 4: Two Volume Set) [SIGNED]

HORN, Roni

Publisher: Köln (Cologne): Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 1994
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 3883751871
Condition: Fine / No dust jacket as issued
Item #: 100824

$825.00

Specifics

First edition, first and only printing. Signed in graphite on the half-title page by Horn. Hardbound. Two volumes, each bound in black linen cloth with blind-stamped title, no dust jacket as issued. Photographs and text (in English and Icelandic) by Roni Horn. Volume 1 (photographs): 96 pp., with 52 four-color and black and white plates, beautifully printed on heavy fine matt art paper. 10 1/2 x 8 3/8 inches. Volume 2 (text): 176 pp., with 1 four-color and 3 plates, and one map illustration with text, printed on fine matt art paper.

Volume 1 is a collection of photographs united by the near invisible presence of the geothermally heated waters of Iceland. The structures built to access and utilize these waters range from the remote and inaccessible hot pot to power plants and baptismal fonts. The photographs were taken in Iceland between 1990 and 1993.

Volume 2 is a collection of 36 texts -- short anecdotal pieces, essays and short stories gathered from the artist's experiences in Iceland. This is the fourth volume in the series of the work, To Place. To Place is an ongoing series of publications. Each volume is a unique dialogue addressing the relationship between identity and place. The books take as their starting point Iceland and the evolving experiences of the artist in this country. This first edition was limited to 1000 hardbound copies.

[Cited in Andrew Roth, ed., The Open Book. (Göteborg, Sweden: Hasselblad Center in association with Steidl Verlag, Göttingen, Germany, 2004), and in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, Volume II. (London and New York: Phaidon, 2006).]

Out of print. Very scarce.

Condition

Fine (both volumes).

Description

This is the fourth volume in the series of the work, To Place. To Place is an ongoing series of publications. Each volume is a unique dialogue addressing the relationship between identity and place. The books take as their starting point Iceland and the evolving experiences of the artist in this country.

From Roni Horn (in a 1995 interview with Claudia Spinelli): "The entrance to all my work is the idea of an encyclopedia of identity. It is best represented by the books, the series called To Place, which is extremely important to me. I have been working on this since 1988. It's really the heart. It is a series of books, each one of which adds to the whole in a way that alters the identity of it retroactively. So the first volume appears to be a book of drawings. The second book was about a completely different subject but in the same format. With the third volume people start to realize something: 'Well, this looks like a series, so there must be some relationship. But I haven't a clue as to what it is.' Then there was the fourth volume, with texts and photographs. The books are this very slow process of accumulation in the period of a life, my life."