Ugo Rondinone Meditates on Space and Time at Kukje Gallery
Catch the multi-venue exhibitions in Seoul and Busan.
Ugo Rondinone is currently holding a multi-venue exhibition of work at South Korea’s Kukje Gallery. On view in both the Seoul and Busan locations, the Swiss artist brings his monolithic creations to meditate on previously explored concepts centered around time and space.
In “nuns and monks by the sea,” Rondinone curiously subverts his lifeless stone structures with the holiness that is often imbued in holy figures. In the Seoul space, each of the five bronze sculptures consist of two distinctly painted parts — a large anthropomorphic base that is topped off by a smaller head-like stone. Instead of subscribing to any specific religious dogma, the mythic artwork carries an “innate beauty and energy,” said the artist in a statement, adding “its structural quality, its surface texture, and its ability to collect and condense time” is meant to welcome the visitor to peruse around the object and the surrounding space.
Elsewhere in the Busan location, Rondinone has covered the windows with a subtle gray UV tint that is made to give a sheltered feeling and simultaneously complements the suite of paintings that reference the artist’s home in Mattituck on Long Island, New York. The row of sunsets provides the viewer an allusion to time itself, a phenomenon the artist described as “the living universe.”
“nuns and monks by the sea” is in its final days on view at Kukje Gallery in Seoul and Busan and will end on May 15.
Speaking on exhibitions, Cali Thornhill DeWitt presents “Live Forever 2” at HVW8 Berlin.
Kukje Gallery
54 Samcheong-ro,
Jongno-gu, Seoul,
South Korea
20 Gurak-ro 123(baegisipsam)beon-,
Mangmi 2(i)-dong,
Suyeong-gu, Busan,
South Korea
