Ugo Rondinone
Lowland Lullaby (2002)
During his residency at The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM), Swiss artist
Ugo Rondinone created an interactive visual and sound installation in the form
of a stage onto which gallery visitors can walk. Working with FWM Project
Coordinator Doina Adam, the stage was made of 100 individual wood sections and
hand-printed using black and white automotive paint in a repeat design.
Through a grid of curving lines, the two-dimensional pattern perceptually
suggests a three-dimensional undulating space. To protect the pattern, the
entire surface was coated with the highest-grade polyurethane, designed for
use on buses and airplanes.
Several speakers are embedded throughout the floor, playing a poetic
collaboration with beat poet John Giorno. In the context of the highly
patterned stage and its associations of a performance or a dance club, the
sound component also creates a social space. Using very simple means
(plywood, steel, hand-printed paint), Rondinone's installation investigates
the construction and interaction of visual, aural and social spaces.
The work will be on view at the
Swiss Institute in New York at 495 Broadway, Third Floor,
New York, New York 10012, until May 11, 2002, along with work by artist
Urs Fischer.
Born in Brunnen, Switzerland, in 1963, Ugo Rondinone's early artistic
formation included a short stint working with the performance artist Hermann
Nitsch and his Orgies Mystery Theater. Rondinone attended Vienna's Hochschule
fur Angewandte Kunst from 1986-1990. He came into prominence in Europe in the
early 1990s with installations that explored the contrasts between natural and
artificial environments, and combined live actors, sound, painting,
photography, and video. His work has been described by critic Anders Kohl as a
"kind of displacement activity...whose genuine motive is a thematization of
rootlessness and placelessness." Rondinone's U.S. solo debut at the Matthew
Marks Gallery, in spring 2000, was comprised of an eclectic combination of
abstract target paintings, video, and photographic series. The exhibition
attracted favorable reviews in Art in America and contributed to
Rondinone's growing reputation. Most recently Rondinone has turned to
translating his psychological states into environments that are intended to
provoke a corresponding mood in the viewer. Elizabeth Janus, writing in
Artforum, describes the "parallel realities" he creates as "filled with
fantasy, angst, monotony, and despair...closer to the truth than we'd care to
admit." Rondinone, who currently lives in New York City, has also published
several photographic books.
Above: Ugo Rondinone, In collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum,
Philadelphia, and the Swiss Institute, New York.
Lowland Lullaby, 2002.
Wood, automotive paint, speakers, audio CD.
Installation dimensions variable.
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber.
Installation view at the Swiss Institute, New York
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