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Roger Hiorns (born 1975 in Birmingham, UK) is a leading representative of the young generation of international artists. In 2009, he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for his powerful installation Seizure, in which he covered the walls of a London flat in copper sulfate crystals, thus earning himself the moniker of “alchemist”. His current exhibition in Prague includes not only sculptural installations that combine industrial objects with the element of fire and young nudes in various poses, but also a military airplane engine and a church altar that have been ground to dust. The new installation Beings consists of roughly 200 mutants – objects made of plastic parts from old cars that levitate in groups and ominously spew foam. Hiorns is constantly working with the visitor’s emotions, but his works’ ideological exploration of the dark side of progress and the self-centeredness of Western civilization has gradually gained in importance. His art is highly ambivalent, with an increasing focus on the gap between what we see on the surface and what we learn about the exhibited works’ origin or background. Hiorns the alchemist thus becomes the enfant terrible of an all-too-comfortable society. We can reject his works for making us feel “uncomfortable” just as well as we can love them for yearning for the truth.
