Ugo Rondinone - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Wednesday, June 26, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber, Zurich
    Galerie Almine Rech, Paris

  • Exhibited

    Avignon, Collection Lambert, Coollustre, 24 May - 28 September 2003 (catalogue)

  • Catalogue Essay

    'I don't have to understand an artwork through linguistic conventions. I have only to feel it.' UGO RONINONE

    Over the course of his career, Ugo Rodinone has developed an extensive and diverse body of work ranging in medium and scale, including more intimate drawings, paintings, photographs, video and site specific installations, as well as large-scale public sculptures and neon signs. His vast oeuvre is interwoven by an ongoing exploration of the emotional and spiritual power of the human condition. A meditation in existentialism, the artist uses the conventions of landscape as an avenue to express his separateness from the external world. The use of the horizon or landscape as an allegory has held a long-standing presence in art history, extending into modern and contemporary practices from Mark Rothko to Andreas Gursky. The continuum of this tradition is exemplified in Ugo Rondinone’s #209 DREISSIGSTERJUNIZWEITAUSENDUNDNULL, 2000, underscoring 'the relationship between the modern artist and the landscape as a site for melancholy reflection.' (D.Thorp, Ugo Rondinone- Zero built a nest in my navel, London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2006, p.275)

    Within the confined walls of an exhibition space, Rodinone’s energetic installations introduce the viewers to new environments, altering their experience in sites that essentially become artificial, yet intimate, landscapes. His celebrated rainbow neon signs comprised of short text phrases such as Hell, Yes!, 2001 and Where Do We Go From Here?, 1999, are mounted on or situated above buildings and effectively define and assert the respective landscapes that they inhabit. Delicately balancing the literal and abstract definition of space, the artist’s ongoing series of mandala - or target - paintings and his landscapes - or horizons - are represented in the preset lot, #209 DREISSIGSTERJUNIZWEITAUSENDUNDNULL, 2000, which, proposes a dazzling landscape of colored registers referencing post-painterly abstraction, the aesthetic of Op Art and Color Field painting. Rondinone’s mesmerizing strata of vivid magenta and black beam against soft tones of lavender, white and slate blue all of which subtly perform before our gaze. The artist’s feelings of alienation and disconnect are present in the title’s translation, June 13th 2000, which references the date of its production and the simultaneous undermining of 'any promise of spiritual fulfillment [which] is undercut by the banality of a daily act, transformed into a testament of presence and of ritualistic activity.' (Ibid., p.273)

4

No. 209 DREISSIGSTERJUNIZWEITAUSENDUNDNULL

2000
gloss acrylic on polyester resin
150 x 400 cm. (59 x 157 1/2 in.)
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Estimate
£70,000 - 90,000 

Sold for £86,500

Contact Specialist
Peter Sumner
Head of Contemporary Art Department
psumner@phillips.com
+44 207 318 4063

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London 27 June 2013 7pm