“The mountain sculptures, the stone figures, and the recent basalt sculptures nuns + monks evoke archaic and contemporary sources alike, concretizing cycles of time and life as physical form. I’m putting faith in stone as material—in its innate beauty and energy, its structural quality, its surface texture, and its ability to collect and condense time. The grotesque biomorphic distortion that characterizes the lifetime of a stone can become a haunting openness when transformed by color and palpable emotional charge. All three groups of stone works share a paradoxical mixture of vulnerability and strength, and express solidarities between human and nature”.

Genderless painted anthropoids on pedestals, sixteen “nuns and monks” are life sized. All cultures have a version of this religious iconography, and the heroic proportions and color infused palette imbue the figures with ancient power and contemporary vision. One series is painted bronze and a new series of basalt stone and stainless steel is presented. 

Made of cooled lava, basalt is known for its transformative and grounding properties and was once used for Egyptian sarcophaguses. Rondinone’s has a long history of working in stone. His father was a mason, and the artist acknowledges, “Stones have been a presence and recurring material and symbol in my art.” 

Flowing ecclesiastic habits are depicted with dramatic folds. Unexpected color jolts of crimson, green, pastel pink are crowned with the chromatic contrast of consecrated headpieces. From the anonymous austerity of monastic robes to noble visages, “nuns and monks” echoes the restraint and simplicity of a hermit life.  Rondinone has said, “I wanted to reveal the multivalent potential of nuns+ monks as vessel and beacon, human body and mystical source. I use the name Nuns + Monks as a general term for a hermit. A hermit is an individual who has spent years in isolated retreat practicing secret self-transforming physicals and mental exercises, and through these techniques has developed extraordinary control over both mind and body.” 

Spiritual sources again empower the second body of works of this show, three Sun and Moon paintings. Reductive and rhythmic symmetry, restrained palette and simplified imagery embody the artist’s
statement: the sunrise sunset paintings provide a sense of the scope of my interests and passions between the inner self and the natural work. They also demonstrate how I give my motifs space to come into focus at their own pace. As I return to a set of motifs and symbols over the years—as is the case with the landscape paintings—they reveal their emotional complexities and reverberations, gaining in mystery and becoming only more elusive as I hone them and explore their intricacies. Knowledge and familiarity are never taken for granted; rather, I keep the unknown squarely at the center of my gaze.’ Each large watercolor on canvas work consists of an elemental sky, sea and an orb that can be either a sun or moon. The stark simple compositions reflect a meditative elegance.  An azure universe is etched with layered brushwork as a full moon float in a day lit sky, eloquently conversing with an adjacent painting of a rising sun bisecting a darkened sky and horizon. Reduced to painterly abstractions, the luminous landscapes depict a timeless and bucolic universe. Swatches of multilayered color fields are visible in the patterned washes peeking from the painting’s edges, intricate calligraphic rainbow bursts. 

The third body of work consisting of four color infused and time defying clocks continues Rondinone’s series of time pieces with no hands. Stained glass faces, each aglow with primary hues and varying wired geometrical divisions open a dialogue about the ephemeral essence of time itself. Humanity’s attempts to measure moments- from sand flowing through an hourglass to the tick of a clock’s hands -present the mystery of the perceivable present.
These luminous horologes address the solitary moment, to the very transience of time itself. Honoring the internal and external world’s incommensurable togetherness, Ugo Rondinone’s poetic and prescient practice is as sublime as it is primal.