This exhibition of approximately 15 works of the renowed German performance artist, sculptor and filmaker, Rebecca Horn is her first substantial exhibition in Ireland. The work has been personally selected by the artist and includes installations, several mechanised sculptures, painted photographs, etchings and accompanying texts, as well as Horn’s entire film oeuvre.

Horn’s work explores themes of sexuality, human vulnerability and emotional fragility. The earlier works, represented in the exhibition by ‘Parrot Blue Wing Machine’, focus on her own body and senses. They frequently incorporate performances and elaborate costumes that enabled her to pursue this exploration. Horn has also made large site-specific installations in numerous galleries and historical sites, such as those at a prison in Munster, Germany, and at the thermal baths in Bath, England.

Film and video were initially used by Horn soley to document her performances, but were later developed by the artist into a new sphere of her work. Horn has made several full-length feature films, often staged in indoor settings. The association between sculpture and film, which forms an essential dimension of Rebecca Horn’s work, is explored in, for example, ‘La Ferdinanda: Sonta for a Medici Villa’, 1981, and ‘Buster’s Bedroom’, 1990.

Born in 1944, Rebecca Horn has had her work exhibited in many leading museums and galleries in Europe and America. In 1994 a major survey was shown at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindoven, the Netherlands; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; and the Tate Gallery and Serpentine Gallery, London. Horn has been included in many major international group exhibitions, such as Sculptur Project, Munster, 1997 and 1999, and Documenta, Kassel, 1986. She won the Carneige Prize at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh in 1988.

The exhibition is touring to Santiago de Compostella, Spain, and Nimes, France, before being shown at IMMA, and to Budapest, South America and Japan afterwards.

The exhibition is organised in cooperation with the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart. A substantial fully-illustrated catalogue published by the Institut fur Auslands -beziehungen e.V (IFA) with texts by Carl Haenlein, Sergio Edelsztein, Martin Mosebach, Doris von Drathen and Rebecca Horn will be available (price £19.95 €25.33)