Ugo Rondinone - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 17, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich

  • Exhibited

    New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Ugo Rondinone: Long Gone Sole, 18 September – 30 October, 2004 (another example exhibited); Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, 12 February – 5 June, 2005; London, Hayward Gallery, 6 October – 11 December, 2005; Trento e Rovereto, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea, 10 February – 14 May, 2006; Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist’s Eye (july, december: another example exhibited); London, Whitechapel Gallery, Ugo Rondinone: zero built a nest in my navel, 24 January – 26 March, 2006; Modena, Galleria Civica, Ugo Rondinone: Giorni Felici, 15 September, 2006 – 7 January, 2007 (another example exhibited)

  • Literature

    Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist’s Eye, New York, 2005, p. 207 (illustrated); Exhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Gallery, Ugo Rondinone: zero built a nest in my navel, London, 2006, pp. 244-247, 256-259 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone first came to international attention in the early 1990s with installations combining photography, video, painting, drawing, sculpture and sound. Working in a diverse range of mediums, Rondinone is an artist who has expressed an ongoing fascination for the moon and its mysteries. Moonrise West is the title of an extensive series of giant, ghost-like masks, sculpted and cast in a black gel-like chemical substance polyurethane, which merge animal and human features to generate an ambiguous malevolence.
     
    Each mask varies from the other, some with elongated faces or pointed chins; others are round spherical or oblong-shaped. Yet they also bear similar features with one another; hollow cast out spaces producing deep set eye sockets, coupled with wide gaping smiles, sometimes toothless or lined with razor sharp jagged teeth. There is almost a playful child-like innocence to these sculptures, seemingly innocuous and artificial. At the
    same time, the gestural marks and tactile hand-made impressions left by the artist has invigorated these still faces to exude a sense of vibrancy, life and personality. The artist has articulated this work to be poetic and
    spiritual in nature, as it provokes us to address a split between our inner selves and public personas; a mask covering our true feelings and intentions; the moon overtaking the sun in the sky.
     

304

MOONRISE.west.january to december

2004
Twelve cast black polyurethane masks.
Installation dimensions variable; smallest: 96 x 67 x 30 cm. (37 3/4 x 26 3/8 x 11 3/4 in)., largest: 118 x 65 x 30 cm. (46 1/2 x 25 5/8 x 11 3/4 in).
This work is from an edition of three plus two artist's proofs. This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Estimate
£200,000 - 300,000 

Sold for £229,250

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

18 Oct 2008, 7pm
London