Roger Hiorns

Roger Hiorns’ Untitled sculptures are vessel shaped objects hanging from the ceiling, which produce pillars of foam slowly rising from the top. The foam will irrevocably find its way downward and sometimes stain the surface of the work. Ephemeral and formless, Hiorns has the foam and gravity determine the appearance of the work whilst the artists himself has no control over the appearance from which the space is illuminated with this minimal combination of materials. Hiorns makes sculptures that investigate material and form in a broad sense. His works can often be recognized as unworldly. They seem to refer to nothing but themselves: to the material of which they consist, to the form they have and to the tension that occurs between them. The artist often uses processes in which he himself has no influence on the eventual appearance of the work. A characteristic for Hiorns’ working method is the combination of two basic elements, which are simultaneously opposite and supplementing each other: in this case ceramic pots or steel vessel with moving foam. The relation between the movable and the immovable, the living and the dead, yields an undeniable tension in his work. Like a modern-day alchemist Hiorns transforms the objects and materials to give them a new function and meaning.