Fluorescent Ugo
Underneath its colorful surface, artist Ugo Rondinone’s work hides a deeper meaning.
Along a stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard off Interstate 15, a special set of mountains lure travelers making the trek between Sin City and Los Angeles. Cruising down the highway, dozens of cars line the busy road, as throngs of tourists meander from parking spots clutching their smartphones, cameras at the ready. Unlike travelers to Nevada’s other great man-made wonder, The Hoover Dam, these sightseers are in search of a more colorful development. Amidst the arid landscape’s neutral tones, artist Ugo Rondinone’s vibrant installation, Seven Magic Mountains, stands out.
If you haven’t scrolled past the pictures on social media, seen them on TV, or flipped through articles about them in magazines, you’ve definitely heard of these larger-than-life sculptures. It’s been called Las Vegas’ answer to Stonehenge, but Seven Magic Mountains is more than the sum of the fluorescent hues that color its surface. The series of totemic pilings is the work of one of the largest names in contemporary art. Though this latest project earned him mainstream acclaim, for decades Rondinone has been slowly chipping away, producing a highly varied oeuvre, from painting and sculpture, to installation, conceptual, and public art. His life’s work is the subject of a recent retrospective at Miami Beach’s Bass Museum of Art on view through February 19, 2018 to commemorate the institution’s reopening after a two-year renovation.
The show marks the first US solo museum exhibition for Swiss-born, New York-based Rondinone, whose practice spans three decades. Titled “Good Evening Beautiful Blue,” the retrospective comprises three separate installations: Vocabulary of Solitude (2014), Clockwork for Oracles II (2008), and A Place Where Nothing Happens (1999-2000). The show takes up the museum’s second floor and ranges from video and installation to performance and collage. And if you don’t have a chance to make the trip out to Nevada, The Bass also commissioned Miami Mountain—a sculpture in the vein of Seven Magic Mountains—so visitors can get a sense of the desert installation in a more tropical setting.
Miami Mountain (2016) located in front of the Bass Museum.
Artist Ugo Rondinone.
The show centers on Vocabulary of Solitude, an installation of 45 life-sized clown statues in a variety of costumes and posses throughout the exhibition space. The sprawling piece represents the different aspects of the artist’s daily routine: each figure portrays a different activity from walking and showering to remembering and dreaming. Though they’re festooned with the artist’s trademark fluorescent colors, these clowns aren’t the happy-go-lucky characters you’d normally expect to see at the circus, entertaining kids with their slapstick gags. Isolated, dejected, and depressed, each statue stares off into the distance instead of engaging with the viewer or one another. The installation embodies the spirit of the artist’s work: a contrast between an outer semblance and a deeper hidden meaning.
It’s that same juxtaposition that lies at the core of Seven Magic Mountains. The rocks that form the piece were mined from a local quarry located just a few miles from the site of the installation in Nevada. These seemingly prehistoric formations are painted with bright, artificial colors that belie their natural form. Rondinone’s metaphor extends beyond the pieces themselves to a general world view. All beings, animate or inanimate, possess the same conflict—a struggle between the outer and inner self. A coat of makeup on a person’s face can hide emotional torment, for example. Yet the artists remains agnostic about the implications of this point of view. Rather than judge glaring hypocrisies, Rondinone’s dualities are a source of beauty not dissonance. It’s the ambiguities created by the contrasts that make his works so alluring, even to the untrained eye.
“Because Ugo’s practice deals with duality, the juxtaposition is inherent to much of his work,” says Bass Museum curator Leilani Lynch. “The colorful, sometimes shiny or reflective materials used can seem superficial at first, but as you spend time in each installation, the details trigger self-reflection and introspection.”
Born in Brunnen, Switzerland, to Italian parents, Rondinone always had a passion for fine arts. In school, he worked as an assistant to Austrian avant-garde performance artist Hermann Nitsch at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He came on the international art scene first as a painter, where he developed his trademark palette of bright colors early on. His first foray into public art took the form of large neon signs in the vein of Jenny Holzer. With imperative phrases like “Hell, Yes!” “Our Magic Hour” and “Dog Days Are Over,” they were meant to shock the average passerby, awaking them from a state of complacency with their vibrant rainbow pattern. Though, unlike Holzer, Rondinone’s pieces are imbued with a sense of irreverence that’s emblematic of his work.
Installation view of Vocabulary of Solitude (2014).
Detail view of a sculpture from Vocabulary of Solitude (2014).
“Ugo is a proponent of the idea that art should be felt or experienced rather than understood, and I think that carries through into the work that he makes,” explains Lynch. “His use of everyday materials and universally recognizable symbols: Clowns, newspaper, windows, doors, rainbows, for example, make the work accessible for multiple audiences.”
And it’s that accessibility that’s made Rondidone’s work so popular. Whether it’s a sculpture, video, site-specific installation, or a more traditional medium like oil-on-canvass, he manages to keep growing an avid fan base of devotees. His pieces inspire both heady dialogs and warm smiles, and that is no small order, even for one of the brightest—and most fluorescent—stars in the art world.
