Swiss, b. 1964, Brunnen, Switzerland, based in New York, New York
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.
Solo exhibitions include the MACRO, Roma, Nevada Museum of Art, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen,
Rotterdam, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Wiener Secession, Vienna;
Art Institute of Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia;
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, MUSAC,
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla, León, Spain, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark.
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.
His work is held in collections worldwide such as the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia,
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, Spain, Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Switzerland, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland.
