Ugo Rondinone - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 12, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich

  • Catalogue Essay

    Underlying all Rondinone's work is a tension between interior essence and exterior appearance, enacted in the first instance through a disparity between form and content. India ink drawings of Arcadian, preindustrial landscapes and hypnotic target paintings, rendered in hazy concentric circles of vivid colour, induce feelings of meditative of transcendental reflection. Yet the surface of his target paintings is flat and blurred, a depthless plane that contradicts the absorptive qualities they promise....played out at both visual and linguistic levels, they constantly refer to something other than the works themselves....the target paintings recall colourfield painting and the mandalas of the 1960s psychaedelia; each inhabits these traditions like a masquerade. They evoke but do not reconcile personal and cultural expression, individual artistic practice and a wider aesthetic discourse. Turn to the titles furthermore, and both are named with the day and date of their production. Any promise of spiritual fulfilment is undercut by the banality of a daily act transformed into a testament of presence and of ritualised activity.
    A. Tarsia, ed., Ugo Rondinone: Zero Built a Nest in my Navel, Whitechapel, London, 2005, p. 273

234

No. 213 ZWEIUNDZWANZIGSTERJULIZWEITAUSENDUNDNULL

2000
Acrylic on canvas.
Diameter: 86 5/8 in. (220 cm).

Estimate
£60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for £96,000

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

Evening Sale
13 October 2007, 4pm
London