Introduction

Ugo Rondinone is recognised as one of the great voices of his generation, an artist who proposes trenchant reflections on nature and the human condition, while establishing a formal and organic vocabulary in which he fuses a variety of sculptural and pictorial traditions. His generous and expansive vision of nature has resulted in an extensive range of two- and three-dimensional objects, installations, videos, and performances. His hybrid forms, inspired by ancient and modern sources, exude pathos and humour and point to the most pressing issues of our time, where modernist achievements and archaic expression intersect.

Rondinone's practice unfolds the complexity of seemingly simple phenomena or objects such as day and night, natural and artificial, vulnerability and strength, dichotomies that are deeply interrelated and that function as organising principles of his work. The artist explores aspects of human experience and perception that are linked to the sensations that we intuitively or culturally assign to these distinctions. In his work, symbols and cultural constructs, images and words that make their way across communication systems, latitudes and historical moments, are devices that Rondinone constantly analyses and uses, drawing on the capacity of each person to respond to them from a visceral and primal place.

The rainbow - a natural phenomenon, testimony to the physical laws of composition and the behaviour of light - is also a symbol with a broad cultural and religious background, which the artist uses to allude to the playful capacity of children to imagine environments, or for its associations with the LGTB+ community. Rondinone makes use of other symbols such as the cloud, the sun, the human body, the stone or the tree, all elements present in the visual imaginary of different cultures from prehistoric times to the present, which he plays with for their metaphorical richness and their capacity to establish connections with different audiences. Regardless of the breadth of meaning of these elements, the artist believes in the transformative power of art and states: "like a chronicler, I record the living universe: this season, this day, this hour, this sound in the grass, this breaking wave, this sunset, this end of the day, this silence."