Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, July 12, 2023: Ugo Rondinone, A Swiss sculptor, painter, and photographer (#1851)

Ugo Rondinone (1964) is a Swiss-born artist widely recognized for his mastery of several different media —most prominently sculpture, drawing and painting, but also photography, architecture, video and sound installation—in the largely figurative works he has made for exhibitions in galleries, museums and outdoor public spaces around the world. He has never limited himself to a particular material, no more than he has to a single discipline. Lead, wood, wax, bronze, stained glass, ink, paint, soil and stone are all tools in a creative arsenal that the artist has employed to extend the Romantic tradition in works that are as sensitive to the passage of time as to the nuances of body language and the spoken word.

Rondinone is widely known for his temporary, large-scale land art sculpture, Seven Magic Mountains (2016–2021), with its seven fluorescently-painted totems of large, car-size stones stacked 32 feet (9.8 m) high.

His wide-ranging practice utilizes metaphoric and iconographic images such as clouds, animals, and figures, as well as powerful declarative sayings. Kamel Mennour and Ugo Rondinone have been working together since 2017.

Rondinone has been the subject of recent institutional exhibitions at: Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway; Medellín Museum of Modern Art, Colombia; Kunsthalle Helsinki, Finland; and Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York; Fundación Casa Wabi, Puerto Escondido, Mexico; Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark; and Tate Liverpool, UK; Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; and Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France; Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, NL; and The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, US.

In 2013, Rondinone installed “human nature”, an exhibition of nine monumental stone figures in Rockefeller Plaza, New York, organized by Public Art Fund.

In 2016, Rondinone’s large-scale public work “seven magic mountains” opened outside Las Vegas, co-produced by the Art Production Fund and Nevada Museum of Art.

In 2017, Rondinone curated a city-wide exhibition, “Ugo Rondinone: I ♥ John Giorno,” which was presented in twelve New York non-profit institutions: Artists Space, High Line Art, Howl! Happening, Hunter College Art Galleries, the Kitchen, New Museum, Red Bull Arts New York, Rubin Museum of Art, SkyArt, Swiss Institute, White Columns and 80WSE Gallery.

Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include: Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome; Belvedere 21, Vienna; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista / Venice Biennale; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Städel Museum, Frankfurt; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C and the Petit Palais, Paris.

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Ugo Rondinone

No how on, 2002

All those doors, 2003

The 5th hour of the poem, 2005

Quiet, 2006

Exhibition view, 2007
Château de Versailles

Exhibition view, 2008
Art Basel

Touching the void, 2008

Exhibition view, 2009
Tuileries, Paris

Exhibition view, 2010
Tuileries, Paris

Dear sunset, 2013

Exhibition view, 2013
Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition view, 2013
Rockefeller Plaza, New York City

Exhibition view, 2014
Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai

Pink Yellow Green Orange Mountain, 2015

Exhibition view, 2016
Public Art Production Fund and Nevada Museum of Art, Nevada Desert, Las Vegas

Permanent installation, 2016
Bass Museum, Miami

Primordial, 2016

Seven Magic Mountains, 2016
Las Vegas, Nevada

White Silver Red mountain, 2016

Exhibition view, 2018
ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj

Pink White Blue Yellow Mountain, 2018

The cordial, 2018

Exhibition view, 2019
kamel mennour, Paris

View of the exhibition “a wall- Seven windows - Four people - Three trees -
Some clouds - One sun. In memory of John Giorno, the love of my life. 2019