IN SEARCH OF THE MECHANIZED SOUL

German artist presents dynamic sculptures in Beijing, Xu Haoyu reports.

Rebecca Horn, one of the representative German artists emerging from the 1980s on the international stage, is exhibiting in Beijing a series of dynamic mechanical sculptures and gouache paintings created after 2000.

Her ongoing exhibition The Journey to China at Hua International is part of the Gallery Weekend Beijing, one of the major annual art events in the capital. It marks Horn's first solo exhibition in China. It is curated by Thomas Schulte, who is the principal of the artist's Berlin gallery.

Horn's mechanical installations, whether they are grand pianos suspended from ceilings or small, delicate objects, have become increasingly poetic in recent years. The artist suggests that they possess a soul because they move, tremble, faint, almost fall apart and then revive.