Ugo Rondinone
zweiteraprilzweitausendundsiebzehn, 2017
Oil on burlap
341 x 401 cm

Ugo Rondinone
the quick, 2019
Bluestone, stainless steel, concrete
101,6 x 33 x 25,4 cm (sculpture)
63,5 x 53,3 x 53,3 cm (pedestal)
165,1 x 53,3 x 53,3 cm (overall)

Taking the universally recognized motif of a brick wall as point of departure, Ugo Rondinone's large scale zweiteraprilzweitausendundsiebzehn traverses the boundary between sculpture and painting.

The work presents a neat, uniform pattern of horizontal rectangles—a visual shorthand for a brick wall—painted in a single tone of vivid orange on burlap, with the spaces between each “brick” demarcated in yellow. The oil paint has been applied with thick, robust brush strokes, while the edges of the painted “wall” have been left casually unfinished, so that glimpses of the rough burlap under layer can be seen.

There are autobiographical elements to the work. zweiteraprilzweitausendundsiebzehn comes from a series of paintings based on the image of the brick wall that directly refer to Rondinone’s former studio in New York. When he originally moved into the space, he covered the walls with burlap and painted onto them rows of white bricks. He took these burlap works with him to his next studio, where he began to paint similar walls in other colors, including black, violet, orange and pink. Furthermore, the artist’s father was a bricklayer, and his mother was a seamstress. Combining bricks, sewing and paint, this series of works can be seen to unite the professions of father, mother and son.

the quick is made of hewn bluestone. Five blocks have been stacked atop one another to form the basic shape of a human body—legs, waist, torso, and head. The stones, whose rough edges result of the quarry work, have not been modified. The marks left by weather, wind and corrosion contrast with the smooth surface of the poured concrete plinth.

The sculpture is part of a body of work initiated by Ugo Rondinone in 2013 with Human Nature: nine monumental sculptures installed on the Rockefeller Plaza in New York, as part of the Public Art Fund project. In a further development, the artist created smaller iterations of the same motif, inscribing this body of work in an ancestral sculptural tradition that includes Palaeolithic Venus representations, Cycladic marble figurines, Stonehenge, or the Inukshuk stone cairns built by the Inuit in Canada.

Both the uniqueness and the rough, hand-made character of this series of sculptures are further emphasized by the titles given to individual works. These titles, functioning rather more like evocative names, refer to feelings: “the sprightly”, “the keen”, “the thankful”, “the shocked”, “the surprised” …

Ugo Rondinone
ARCO E-XHIBITIONS
www.arco-exhibitions.es


Both works by Ugo Rondinone are also featured on the newly launched platform: ARCO
E-XHIBITIONS, a space devoted to the presentation of exhibitions created by the participating galleries at ARCOmadrid and ARCOlisboa.

ARCO E-XHIBITIONS is a third space, running parallel to the permanent physical spaces of the galleries and the temporary space offered by the fair. Located on ARCO's website, it will be flexible and changing with new contents every month.

ARCO E-XHIBITIONS' goal is to accompany the galleries and their artists on their shared creative processes and to offer collectors and art lovers new projects and presentations of exhibitions; real and possible or imaginary and impossible.

Ugo Rondinone. a wall. a door. a tree. a lightbulb. winter
SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand
Through April 11, 2021
www.skmu.no


Take a virtual tour of Ugo Rondinone's solo exhibition, currently on view at SKMU–Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, in Southern Norway.

The exhibition features four selected large-scale works, that underline an important element to the artist's work: understatement. These naturally crafted objects, that exist on their own, without applied narrative, exist as bare poetic objects free for the onlooker to discover.