- Born:
- January 11, 1975, Birmingham, England (age 51)
Roger Hiorns
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Who is Roger Hiorns?
Roger Hiorns, born in Birmingham, England, on January 11, 1975, is an English installation artist known for his work with unusual elements like fire, cupric sulfate crystals, and engines from cars and airplanes. Hiorns earned a B.A. from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 1996. He often disassembles machinery, a theme evident in works such as The Birth of the Architect (2003). His notable site-specific work, Seizure (2008), involved crystallizing a bed-sitter with cupric sulfate, earning him a Turner Prize nomination in 2009. Hiorns believes art is about proposing new behaviors rather than making objects.
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What kind of artwork is Roger Hiorns known for?
Roger Hiorns is a British installation artist known for working with unusual elements like fire, cupric sulfate crystals, and automotive and airplane engines. His work expands the definitions of media and the creative process. Hiorns challenges commonplace ideas with acts of interference, stepping back to observe the results.
One of Hiorns' most notable works, Seizure (2008), involved filling a bed-sitter with liquid cupric sulfate, resulting in jagged blue crystals covering every surface. This installation earned him a place on the 2009 Turner Prize shortlist. Hiorns also created the Youth series (2013), incorporating tables, benches, engines, and the human figure.
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What materials does Roger Hiorns often use in his art?
Roger Hiorns, a British installation artist, is known for his unconventional use of materials in his art. He incorporates elements such as fire, cupric sulfate crystals, and automotive and airplane engines. Hiorns disassembles machinery and atomizes metal engines to install as powder on gallery floors. He also utilizes tables, benches, and the human figure in his Youth series. In his site-specific work Seizure, Hiorns filled an entire room with liquid cupric sulfate, allowing jagged blue crystals to grow on every surface.
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What is the Seizure project, and why is it famous?
Roger Hiorns is a British installation artist known for using unusual elements in his art, like fire and crystal formations.
His 2008 site-specific work, Seizure, involved acquiring a condemned one-room apartment in London and filling it with liquid cupric sulfate. After draining the liquid and sealing the room for a month, jagged, brilliant blue crystals grew on every surface. The result was a stunning, otherworldly, and toxic environment.
Seizure is famous for its visual impact and transformation of an ordinary space into something extraordinary. It earned Hiorns a spot on the 2009 Turner Prize shortlist, and the entire room was reinstalled in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2013.
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How does Roger Hiorns use science and chemistry in his artworks?
Roger Hiorns employs science and chemistry by incorporating unusual elements such as fire, cupric sulfate crystals, and automotive and airplane engines in his installations. In his degree exhibition, Hiorns coated cardboard models of French Gothic cathedrals with cupric sulfate and allowed the crystallization process to transform them. For Seizure (2008), he filled a room with liquid cupric sulfate, resulting in jagged blue crystals on every surface. Hiorns also atomizes metal engines to install as powder on gallery floors.
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What themes or ideas does Roger Hiorns explore through his art?
Roger Hiorns, born in Birmingham, England, in 1975, is known for his installation art using fire, cupric sulfate crystals, and engines.
Hiorns's art expands definitions of media and the creative process. He challenges commonplace ideas through acts of interference, stepping back to observe the results. His work often involves disassembling machinery and using materials like atomized metal engines and cupric sulfate to transform spaces and objects.
His themes include exploring the history of experience, proposing new types of behavior, and examining machines and objects that carry a sense of authority.
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Roger Hiorns (born January 11, 1975, Birmingham, England) is an English installation artist who works with such unusual elements as fire, cupric sulfate crystals, and automotive and airplane engines. He expands the definitions of media and the creative process by challenging commonplace ideas with acts of interference and then stepping back to watch the results.
As a boy, Hiorns liked to take apart electronic equipment and other objects. He completed (1993) the Fine Art Foundation course at Bournville College, Birmingham, and earned a B.A. (1996) from Goldsmiths, University of London. For his degree exhibition, Hiorns coated cardboard models of French Gothic cathedrals with cupric sulfate (blue vitriol) and allowed the crystallization process to transform them. For Vauxhall (2003) he ran a channel of fire that flamed up through a grate covering a gully beneath the sculpture court floor at Tate Britain. He returned to his boyhood interest in disassembling machinery in The Birth of the Architect (2003) and All-Night Chemist (2004). Hiorns also began creating a series of untitled sculptures that produce foam, including those in the Beachy Head series (2003–05), and, building on his belief that places and objects carry a history of experience, he atomized metal engines to install as powder on a gallery floor in a series of ongoing untitled works.
To carry out his 2008 site-specific work Seizure, Hiorns acquired a bed-sitter (one-room apartment) in a low-rise housing block slated for demolition in London. He filled the room to the ceiling with liquid cupric sulfate, drained away the excess liquid, and sealed the space for a month. Jagged brilliant blue crystals grew on every surface. Stunning and otherworldly, as well as toxic, Seizure won Hiorns a place on the 2009 Turner Prize shortlist. The entire room was reinstalled in 2013 in Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Tables, benches, engines, and the human figure served as the components for the Youth series, installed in its fullest iteration in 2013 to inaugurate the Calder space at the Hepworth Wakefield gallery in West Yorkshire. A young man would enter the gallery, strip off his clothes, and sit on an object, often in close proximity to a small fire. In 2016 Hiorns instructed the boy choristers at St. Philip’s Cathedral in Birmingham to lie on their backs on the sanctuary floor for the duration of the service. That artistic effort he called Untitled (a retrospective view of the pathway). Hiorns categorized the work as a disruptive insertion rather than a performance piece, in keeping with his belief that art was not “so much about making objects” but “about proposing new types of behaviour.”
Hiorns continued to explore machines and similar objects that he regarded as having a sense of authority. In the 2010s he began to bury decommissioned aircraft with a staircase so that visitors could experience the familiar vehicles when their power is deactivated. He interred a Soviet-made jet plane in Prague (2017) and a 1984 British model in Haarlem, Netherlands (2018).