UGO RONDINONE

b. 1964 in Brunnen, Switzerland

Lives and works in New York, USA

 

Since the eighties, Ugo Rondinone has been working with a various range of media, exploring the psychological and emotional impact of simple and often banal elements of everyday life. His work plays on the boundaries between fiction and reality. Shaped as carefully constructed environments, and variously incorporating illusory and architectural devices such as coloured light and sound, mirrors, false walls and floors, windows and mazes, his installations envelop the viewer, suggesting that all is not quite as it seems.

 

Since the mid-nineties, the artist has created mesmerizing out-of-focus circular pictures that give a specific atmosphere, recalling the trance-inducing images of the sixties’ psychædelia. In reference to Jasper Johns’ Targets and sixties’ Op Art pictures, Rondinone’s target paintings project a fresh, contemporary aesthetic through his use of brightly coloured spray paint, designing concentric rings with a smooth, blurred finish. A deep, hypnotizing, visual well, the work seems to pulsate and threatens to swallow its viewers, both attracting and engaging them.

 

Rondinone has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at institutions including:  

Over the Rainbow, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Switzerland (2025); Primordial, Pilane Sculpture Park, Tjörn, Sweden (2025); The rainbow body, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen CO, USA (2024); Cry me a river, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland (2024), Burn to shine, Museum SAN, Wonju, Korea (2024); burn to shine, Fosun Foundation, Shanghai (2023); sunrise. east, Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2023); the sun and the moon, Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York (2023); when the sun goes down and the moon comes up, Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva (2023); the water is a poem unwritten by the air no. the earth is a poem unwritten by the fire, Petit Palais, Paris (2022–23); burn shine fly, Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice (2022); vocabulary of solitude, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City (2022), LIFE TIME, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main (2022); nude in the landscape, Belvedere 21, Vienna (2021–2022), vocabulary of solitude, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland (2021); your age and my age and the age of the rainbow, Belvedere Palace Garden, Vienna (2021); Ugo Rondinone. a wall. a door. a tree. a lightbulb. Winter, Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand (2021); feeling the void and the rhone, Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp, Cully (2021); we are poems, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2019); everyone gets lighter, Kunsthalle Helsinki, Finland; Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York; Fundación Casa Wabi, Puerto Escondido, Mexico; Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark; 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; Place Vendôme, Paris; MACRO and Mercati di Traiano, Rome; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum Anahuacalli, Mexico City; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; M Museum, Leuven, Belgium; Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens; Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna; and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium.

 

Rondinone has been included in notable group exhibitions such as the Berlin Biennale; Liverpool Biennale, Great Britain; 7th Lyon Biennale, France; 54th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh; and Super Vision at the ICA. Rondinone represented Switzerland, along with Urs Fischer, in the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.

 

In 2016, Rondinone’s large- scale public work seven magic mountains opened outside Las Vegas, coproduced by the Art Production Fund and Nevada Museum of Art. The following year, Rondinone curated a city-wide exhibition, “Ugo Rondinone: I John Giorno,” which was presented at 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, all in New York.

 

His work is held in collections worldwide such as the Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Vanhaerents Art Collection, Brussels, FRAC – Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque, France, Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart, France, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, France, Burger Collection, Berlin, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, MACBA, Barcelona, Centro de Arts Visuales Helga de Alvear, Caceres, Spain, Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Switzerland, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland, The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome.