With its elegant form and seductively glossy surface, Untitled (' ...he is remembered for a remark he didn't make) is an exquisite example of Roni Horn’s most celebrated body of work. Radical in its apparent simplicity Horn’s sculptures invite viewers’ active engagement, as a bird’s eye view affords the reward of gazing into the optically pristine interior. Peering at the surface is akin to looking down on a body of water through an aqueous oculus–it is impossible for the human eye to gauge the distance to the bottom. Rendered in vibrant green hues, the cylinder of cast-glass with matte sides and a glossy interior provides a stage for the play of reflections catalyzed by the shifting conditions of natural light.

Closer investigation reveals a sculpture charged with paradox, simultaneously occupying the dual elements of stillness and fluidity, strength and fragility and opacity and translucency. In a discussion of the paradoxes inherent to a similar glass sculpture by the artist in The Museum of Modern Art’s collection, Untitled (Aretha), Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture Ann Temkin credited the paradoxical nature to the appearance of stillness that also “carries the vivid memory of a fluid state,” as well as the character of a natural object that is in actuality, the result of a highly technical feat of artistic fabrication (Ann Temkin, quoted in Exh. Cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, Roni Horn aka Roni Horn: Subject Index, vol. 2, February 2009 - June 2010, p.16).

Throughout her fifty-year career, Roni Horn has developed a multidisciplinary practice, spanning works on paper, books, photography and sculpture, all of which are bound by an ongoing exploration in the nature of identity, meaning and perception. Through this longstanding study of the poetics of mutability, Horn's body of work is marked by intellectual rigor that gives profound attention to materiality.

Horn first began producing cast-glass sculptures in the mid-1990s, with a process that entails pouring colored molten glass into a mold, which gradually hardens over a span of several months. The sides of the resultant form maintain a rough texture from the mold, producing a frosted and opaque appearance that starkly contrasts the smooth fire-polished top. Reminiscent of a pool of crystalline water or molten lava, the interior surface acts as a lens, refracting and reflecting the changing natural light of the surroundings. In this way, the works engage with the artist’s prevailing theme of mutability, as the sculpture’s appearance shifts with the changing atmospheric light, impacting the appearance of its color, weight, and perceived solidity. The perpetual subtle shifts in the work’s appearance place it in an eternal state of flux.

Due to the hallmarks of a reduction of form and focus on materiality, Horn’s sculptural practice is often contextualized within the lineage of Minimalism, bearing connections to Donald Judd and Light and Space artists such as James Turrell. Judd was an early champion of Horn’s work. In 1988, he invited Horn to assist in the installation of her work he acquired, Things That Happen Again, Pair Object VII (For a Here and a There), at his newly opened artist-run contemporary art museum, The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. While the meeting proved impactful for the young artist, Horn consistently maintains that her practice embodies a reaction against Minimalism.