Ugo Rondinone

Ugo Rondinone's installation Roundelay features a hexagonal theater built of angled walls upon which six videos simultaneously project images of a somber man and a slightly stricken-looking woman walking separately through the streets of Paris. Manipulated to vertiginous effect, with rushing perspectives and sharp angles, the videos follow the progress of these two characters as if they were traveling through a cubist painting. The score by minimalist composer Philip Glass seems to echo off the tilting streets and walls, compounding the spatial disorientation and mood of modernist anomie. As in other works by Rondinone, which comprise sound pieces, sculptures, drawings, and paintings, as well as videos, there is a palpable sense of nostalgia in the atmosphere, a feeling of emotional and psychic loss that accompanies the very physical sensation of being set to wander in space. Rondinone's second work, the jolly, carnivalesque sign Everyone Gets Lighter literally sets in lights the allusive title phrase of a recent poem by the storied poet and performer John Giorno. The entire poem is printed on the label near the work.

Selected Bibliography:

Heyday. Exhibition catalogue. Geneva: Centre d'art contemporain, 1996.

Parkett 52 (1998): 104–43. Special section, including essays by Francesco Bonami, Laura Hoptman, and Jan Verwoert.

Stoner, Russell. Ugo Rondinone: Our Magic Hour. Sydney, Australia: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2003.

Ugo Rondinone. Exhibition catalogue. Vienna: Kunsthalle Wien, 2002.

Where Do We Go from Here? Exhibition catalogue. Dijon, France: Le Consortium, 1997.

Links:

Matthew Marks Gallery

Swiss Institute exhibition