Introduction

On October 4, Bank Austria Park on the Old Danube in Vienna, designed by André Heller, opened. One of the 14 artworks installed there is Ugo Rondinone's sculpture vienna mountain, which the artist developed specifically for this location.

The work is 7.34 meters high and consists of four boulders stacked on top of each other and held in place by a solid rod inside. It is part of a series that began in 2016 with the seven-part installation "seven magic mountains" in Ivanpah Valley near Las Vegas and continued in numerous other locations (including Liverpool, Wolfsburg, Miami, and Doha). Ugo Rondinone was inspired to create his "mountains" by hoodoos, bizarre rock formations that occur mainly in the USA.

Like the other works in the series, "vienna mountain" evokes multiple associations, such as statues, totems, needles, figures, columns and towers. The sculpture also brings to mind stone cairns, which people have been building since time immemorial in all places on earth where stones are found - a universal and archaic phenomenon. In contrast to these testimonies of human expression, which usually only exist for a short time, the elements in Rondinone's "vienna mountain" could not be arranged in this way without static support; they suggest a precarious balance.

- Nina Schedlmayer

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