Ugo Rondinone - New Now New York Wednesday, February 28, 2018 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Saatchi Collection, London
    Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber, Zurich
    The Pisces Collection
    Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, May 12, 2005, lot 65
    Private Collection, Europe
    Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, November 15, 2007, lot 12
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, "heyday" ugo rondinone, January 25 - April 28, 1996, pp. 4, 56 (illustrated)
    Donaueschingen, Fürstenberg Sammlungen, ahead of the 21st century - The Pisces Collection, June 2002 - October 2004, no. 102, p. 137 (illustrated)
    London, Whitechapel Gallery, Ugo Rondinone - zero built a nest in my navel, January 24 - March 26, 2006, p. 49 (illustrated)

  • Literature

    Gerald Matt, ed., Ugo Rondinone - No How On, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2002, n.p. (Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève installation view illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “Landscapes are at the root of my work…The whole of romantic imagery is in these landscapes. They portray a nostalgic view of time past.”
    Ugo Rondinone

    Ugo Rondinone’s No. 69 VIERUNDZWANZIGSTERNOVEMBERNEUNZEHNHUNDERTFÜNFUNDNEUNZIG is emblematic of the artist’s engagement with suspended time and space. His pulsing lines and wide strokes of fluid India ink contrast with diaphanous frontal detail to define an immersive, poetic environment. Soaring, gathered mountains and delicate water and trees coalesce to form a serene landscape that is replete with references to both art historical tradition and contemporary commentary on the act of graphic creation. With a nod to Jan Brueghel the Elder’s feathery trees and rivers, Fragonard’s cloud-covered hills, and John Constable’s nineteenth-century ponds and gardens, Rondinone creates a monumental, monochrome landscape that unfolds lyrically in front of the viewer. Specifically calling to mind Rembrandt’s celebrated black and white etchings, Rondinone modernizes the powerful yet ethereal effects of light and shade that the Dutch draughtsman reflected in drypoint and inks with a vivid three-part tonal structure: rich black at the deepest structural points and uniform charcoal grey in the middle give way to a luminescent white that evokes the piercing brightness of photographic negatives.

    Epitomizing the artist’s exploration of time, the work’s German title lists without pause the date of its execution, “twentyfourthofnovembernineteenhundredninetyfive”. As curator Alison Gingeras has noted, Rondinone’s landscape works “are subjected to a ritualized time of production” as he likens “his practice to a series of devotional rituals” (Ugo Rondinone – zero built a nest in my navel, exh. cat, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2006, p. 279). Making the passing of time manifest, No. 69 VIERUNDZWANZIGSTERNOVEMBERNEUNZEHNHUNDERTFÜNFUNDNEUNZIG is a powerful example in a striking scale of how Rondinone melds pictorial and linguistic poetry to heighten the experience of sensitive reflection.

25

No. 69 VIERUNDZWANZIGSTERNOVEMBERNEUNZEHNHUNDERTFÜNFUNDNEUNZIG

India ink on paper, mounted to canvas, silkscreen on Plexiglas plaque
108 1/8 x 198 5/8 in. (274.6 x 504.5 cm.)
Executed in 1995.

Estimate
$180,000 - 250,000 

Sold for $375,000

Contact Specialist
Sam Mansour
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1219
smansour@phillips.com

New Now

New York Auction 28 February 2018