Ugo Rondinone’s Sun sculptures consist of bronze cast from encircling tree branches gilded with gold leaf. Evoking the celestial body, Rondinone’s Sun sculptures express a positive energy that the artist associates with the sun. The artist began this new body of work in 2016 with the installation of a sun sculpture in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles. The sublime forces of time and nature are a recurring motif within Rondinone’s practice.

His work often evokes the tensions between the immediate present and the inconceivable eventual. His interest in what he calls “primitive materials” such as the bronze and the reference to tree branches in the case of his Sun sculptures, stems from contemplation, stillness and inaction. The over-life size scale of many of his pieces, gives his work a monumental air that suggests a connection both to archaic pre-historic objects and to the wonder of the childhood imagination.