  
|
 |
|
by Pierre-Andrë Lienhard Ugo Rondinone: A Great Joker Facing the Universe The work of Ugo Rondinone seems to organize itself so as to frustrate any effort to apprehend it in its totality. What could be indeed the common denominator between the preindustrial landscapes painted in Indian ink on huge paper sheets, the enormous circular canvases in which concentric rings in vivid colors form the image of a target, the videos that display in fixed and unedited planes the banality of the elements of reality, the photographic pictures in which a trick carried out by a computer allows the artist to use the bodies of feminine models or even the notebooks which suggest - in a format that remind us of the narrative model of cartoons - an intimate fictitious journal in which the images of the artist confined behind bars illustrate the text that refers to the short span of time of a decaying relationship of love? We have to admit that this plurality of forms and expressions that can coexist within a single representation is as important for the apprehension of this artistic stance as is the totality of these works considered one at a time. These, by themselves, propose - immediately, and in such a limited way that there is no chance to mistakenly perceive a false path - a set of references. We have to take into consideration the redirections which are more ambiguous than they seem here, to the "outdoorness" that the 19th century conferred to landscapes, to op art regarding geometric forms, to the playfulness of the distortions carried out by certain representatives of Body Art in photos. It would be a mistake to closely associate Rondinone with the postmodernist conceptions of the artists who resort to quotes and appropriations. Rather than referring to the redirections it would be more promising to interpret his work from the angle of borrowings. It is as if by his formal borrowings and his borrowing of masks he has entered a vast game of roles that makes the work of the artist seem like that of an actor. With an agility that is equal to that of the acrobat or the magician, he multiplies these borrowings so as to make sure that it will never be possible to make only one interpretation of his work. Rondinone's work - as if it were the work of an acrobat whose balance is guaranteed by a pole - acquires its balance from its ambivalences. Rondinone already referred to this strategy, which consists in being there where he is never expected to be in 1995 through the title of the series of photographic manipulations: I don't live here anymore. This sentence echoes, in a certain way, the artistic approach expressed by Baudelaire in his prose poem entitled Anywhere out of the world (itself a borrowing!). The poet states specifically: "I think that I will be there where I am not." Let us keep in mind that " Le Spleen de Paris," the poem from which this text is an extract, contains frequent references to jugglers, madmen and clowns, emblematic figures of the situation of the artist and of art, of its exteriority and ex-centricity regarding the world in general. Should we be surprised when Ugo Rondinone resorts himself to the figure of the clown in his work? The clown started to appear since 1995 in huge graffiti painted in silver spray on the previously darkened wall of the exhibition. Next, in 1996, Rondinone performs dressed as a clown and takes several pictures of himself from various angles pressing the button of the Polaroid that is secured under his arm. The clown is also the main subject of the work that the artist is going to display in Sâo Paulo. A series of seven monitors placed on the floor present inactive clowns. On the ceiling several sound devices with sensors attached will be ready to identify the arrival of spectators and maintain them under a shower of laughter and barking as they walk through the room. As opposed to Clown Torture by Bruce Nauman, Rondinone's clowns refuse to adopt their expected social roles. In a subtle and ambiguous way his installation plays with the clichës that reduce the clown to the role of middleman allowing man to laugh at himself. He stresses the artificialism of this mascarade and inverts its mechanism, not without ironically introducing a foreign body when he suggests an equivalence with animal language. Who is the object of his jests? After Joyce is Rondinone willing to be awarded the title of the "great joker of the universe"? |
Chronology
|
Born in Brummen, in 1963. Between 1986 and 1990 studied at Hochschule fÆr angewandte Kunst, Vienna. Lives and works in Zurich. Solo exhibitions 1996 Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; Museum fÆr Gegenwartskunst, Zurique, Switzerland; Galerie Six Friedrich, Munich, Germany; Le Case d'Arte, Milan, Italy. 1995 Galerie Walcheturm, Zurique, Switzerland; Migrateurs, ARC Musëe d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Galerie Froment-Putman, Paris, France. 1994 Galerie Six Friedrich, Munich, Germany; Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany. 1993 Galerie Ballgasse (Pakesch & Stejskal), Vienna, Austria; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Martigny, Switzerland. 1992 Galerie Walcheturm, Zurich, Switzerland. 1991 Galerie Walcheturm, Zurich, Switzerland; Galerie Pinx, Oskar Schmidt, Vienna, Austria. 1990 Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland. Group exhibitions 1996 Non! Pas Comme Þa!, Centre d'Art Neuchétel, Switzerland; Conversation Pieces II, ICA, Philadelphia, United States; Cabines de Bains, Piscine de la Motta, Fribourg, Switzerland. 1995 Livres d'Artistes, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; Landschaft mit dem Blick der 90-er Jahre, Mitterheinmuseum, Koblenz, Germany; Museum Schlossburg a.d. Saale; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; Oh Pain Oh Life, Helmhaus, Zurich, Switzerland. 1994 Kunsthalle Palazzo, Liestal with Albrecht Schnider and Fëlix Vallotton; Endstation Sehnsucht, Kunsthaus ZÆrich, Zurique, Switzerland; Passing Through, Galerie Walcheturm, Zurique, Switzerland; O Boy, Its a Girl, Kunstverein MÆnchen, Munich, Germany; Messepalast Wien, Vienna, Austria; Bad zur Sonne, Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria. 1993 CHANGING I Dense Cities, Shedhalle ZÆrich, Zurich, Switzerland; Prospekt 93, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany; Hellbound, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Martigny, Switzerland; Die Sprache der Kunst, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany. |