This new publication is dedicated to a series of recent works realized by Ugo Rondinone that relate to the artist's interest in nature and mankind. It contains a detailed survey of the recent exhibition “thank you silence” in M – Museum Leuven (2013), including Rondinone's latest works—“primitive,” a series of hand-molded bronze birds named after natural phenomena, clocks made of colored stained glass, and the complete “nude” series of hyper-realistic, introverted figures cast in a mixture of wax and earth pigments. Two new series made especially for the exhibition are also presented: four monumental soil “landscapes” and the work entitled “your age and my age and the age of the sun,” which features 400 drawings of the sun made by children from Leuven. Through the various groups of works Rondinone constructs a carefully considered transition from nature to man and introduces links between abstract ideas associated with them.
Together with a new essay by curator Eva Wittocx, the book includes 40 images in color, showing installation views as well as details of the artworks, and thus offers an insight into Rondinone's most recent work.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at M – Museum Leuven in 2013.
Ugo Rondinone (*1963, Switzerland) has lived in New York for several years. Using photography, video, painting, drawing, sculpture, sound, and text by turns, Rondinone is a virtuoso of forms and techniques.
Developing surprising sensorial environments, he especially likes destabilizing our perceptions and unsettling our certainties. Rearranging content and formal elements, a personal poetic with elements taken directly from the outside world, he draws us into a synesthetic experience.