Timeline
Rondinone’s past projects
Rondinone makes art across an array of media, ranging from two-dimensional paintings to wax sculptures, and installations on the scale of landscape. Well known for his 2013 installation of anthropomorphic stone sculptures in New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza, Ronindone extends his sculptural exploration of physical space beyond the traditional confines of gallery walls or even a public plaza through Seven Magic Mountains. Rondinone’s body of work is extensive. Here, we highlight a few of the highly acclaimed public artworks for which the artist is known.
Land Art Continuum
Occupying a space between the stillness of the Nevada desert and the constant flux of people traveling between Los Angeles and Las Vegas along Interstate 15, the totemic forms of Seven Magic Mountains recall stone cairns marking the way for travelers passing through unfamiliar landscapes. Nearby Jean Dry Lake, a place integral to the history of Land Art in the American West, creates a resonant context for Seven Magic Mountains because of artworks made there by artists Jean Tinguely (1962) and Michael Heizer (1968). Rondinone invites visitors to contemplate the desert space and its history of human intervention. “Seven Magic Mountains elicits continuities and solidarities between human nature, artificial and natural, then and now,” states Rondinone.
Public Art
Public art is redefining the identities of places around the world. Seven Magic Mountains strengthens Nevada’s identity as a place that celebrates and supports the work of interesting artists, and draws attention to Las Vegas as it evolves into a city also known for the arts. Significantly, Seven Magic Mountains has been encouraged and supported by regional public-private partnerships that yield important economic and cultural development opportunities for Las Vegas and Nevada.
Seven Magic Mountains by Ugo Rondinone is produced by Art Production Fund, New York, and Nevada Museum of Art, Reno.
2013
Human Nature
Human Nature, Rockefeller Plaza, New York, 2013. Organized by Public Art Fund.
Moonrise. East
Moonrise. East, 2008, Basel; San Francisco
2007-2010
Hell, Yes!
Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone has spent the last twenty years working in a diverse range of mediums, including painting, drawing, photography, video, installation, and sculpture. Whether trance-inducing mandala paintings, large-scale drawings from nature, or moody multi-channel video environments, Rondinone’s work explores notions of emotional and psychic profundity found in the most banal elements of everyday life. Since 1997, Rondinone has included the practice of making signs in his varied oeuvre. He takes phrases from pop songs and everyday exclamations and makes them into rainbow-hued, neon-lit sculptures that are joyous affirmations of love and life. For the opening of the New Museum at 235 Bowery, Rondinone will reprise his 2001 work Hell, Yes! The installation encapsulates the philosophy of openness, fearlessness, and optimism that surrounds the New Museum’s reemergence in the contemporary art community, as well as its history as the home of socially committed contemporary art.
2006
Sunrise, East
Ugo Rondinone worked in the Studio House on the creation of twelve mask-like heads, which he modeled in clay over a Styrofoam core. The series Moonrise was cast in aluminum and painted the color of damp clay. A second series (Sunrise) was cast in bronze and painted silver.
2005
1996
Dog Days Are Over
7-channel video installation on 7 monitors (color, no sound), audio sensors
Edition: 1/2 + 1 ap
Dimensions variable
1976
Sun Tunnels
Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, an installation in Northwest Utah, completed in 1976.
Spiral Jetty
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, 1970.
1969-70
Double Negative
Double Negative (1969-70) is a work of land art by the artist Michael Heizer. It is located in the Moapa Valley on Mormon Mesa near Overton, Nevada. Double Negative was acquired into MOCA’s permanent collection in 1985.
“There is nothing there, yet it is still a sculpture.”
-Michael Heizer
1968
Rift 1
Michael Heizer created Rift 1 from the series Nine Nevada Depressions on the surface of Jean Dry Lake in 1968.
1964
1962
Study for an End of the World No. 2
Jean Tinguely’s major desert performance installation Study for an End of the World No. 2 on Jean Dry Lake in 1962.
Middle to Late Archaic Period
Sloan Canyon Petroglyphs
Sloan Canyon contains a great many petroglyphs pecked and carved on the canyon walls. Sloan has been called the Sistine Chapel of Native American rock writing due to the size and significance of the images. Native people created more than 300 panels with 1,700 individual design elements. Archaeologists have found petroglyphs that date from the early prehistoric through the late historic periods.
