Ugo Rondinone
The multi-media artist finding resonance in the childish.
Ugo Rondinone gets bored with too much of the same.
Rondinone himself admits that it’s not unusual for his solo exhibitions to be mistaken for group shows, given the diversity of material, scale and aesthetics with which his works engage.
He is known for his large, rainbow text sculptures as he is for his mandala spray paintings. His name is as associated with his sculptures of sleeping clowns as it is with his video installations.
“At the beginning of the year I know that I have a certain number of exhibitions, so I create for myself a dualism in my head. If I do something big, I must do something small. If I do something in black and white, the next thing must be in color.”
— Ugo Rondinone (Blouin Art Info)
But that’s exactly how Rondinone wants to be perceived: as an artist whose works are constantly balancing against one another to achieve a larger dynamic.
Yet Rondinone also wants viewers to find a coherence in this balanced tension, specifically through the childlike simplicity that presents itself throughout his works. It is, in fact, this simplicity that Rondinone believes to be his art’s strength.
“My work is always very basic and almost childlike. It’s something people can really rely on.”
— Ugo Rondinone
This simplicity makes Rondinone’s works highly accessible to viewers. They appeal to those essential sentiments — sadness, happiness, loneliness, love — that we all share and understand.
His works give these fundamental feelings an elevated place in the art world, asserting that these basic experiences, so essential to being human, are art within themselves.
Ugo Rondinone lives and works in New York City. He has held solo exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and the Museo de Arte Contemporánico de Castilla in León, Spain, the Gladstone Gallery in New York City, Sculpture Center in New York and Casey Kaplan in New York. York City. His works are int he collection of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. He also represented Switzerland in the 52nd Venice Biennale.
The post was written with the help of Alice Mahoney.
