New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Ugo Rondinone: Long Gone Sole, 18 September -30 October 2004 Modena, Palazzo Santa Margherita Corso Canalgrande 103, Ugo Rondinone; Giorni Felici, 15 September - 7 January 2007
Catalogue Essay
The isolated, leafless olive tree, Across Dark Stream of Shooting Stars, is an exquisite example of Ugo Rondinone’s romantic vision of the sublime and the fleeting passage of time. Cast from a 2000 years-old olive tree which was originally located in the countryside outside Naples (the artists’ parents birthplace), the present lot evokes notions of the Arcadian ideal. Loaded with familiar connotations and art historical references, Rondinone’s flair with the nostalgic vision of idyllic nature began in 1991 when he developed a series of monumental Indian-ink drawings inspired by the Swiss landscape depicting the woods, hills, streams and cottages of a pre-modern world.
Rondinone’s deliberate choice of an aged olive tree, a symbol of peace and immortality, manifests the artist’s concern with the nature of time and nostalgia, "through a cast olive tree you can not only experience the lapse of real time, that is lived time, frozen in its given form, but through this transformation also a different calibrated temporality. Time can be experienced as a lived abstraction, where the shape is formed by this accumulation of time and wind force.’ Thus, the inert sculpture appears as a memorial of condensed experience, where there is a nonlinear time horizon; a recurrent tendency in Rondinone’s eclectic artist’s practice which provides him with a ‘certain sense of grounding".
Across Dark Stream of Shooting Stars, a line from one of the artist’s own poems, echoes the poetic approach that Rondinone demonstrates towards notions of the sublime. Employing a very artificial language, accentuated by the detached gallery scenario, the aesthetic of this lot emphasizes the experience of grasping and freezing the concept of time.
2004 cast resin 317.4 x 261 x 269 cm (124 7/8 x 102 3/4 x 105 7/8 in.) This work is number 1 from an edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000
Contact Specialist Henry Highley
Head of Sale hhighley@phillips.com
+ 44 20 7318 4061