New installation by Ugo Rondinone in Rotterdam: Museum van Boijmans Beuningen | 13 February – 29 May 2016

Ugo Rondinone (Switzerland, 1964, lives and works in New York) is filling the Bodon Galleries at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen with an immense installation comprising existing and new works from his colour spectrum series, half mandalas, windows and thousands of rainbow drawings. Forty-five lifelike sculptures of clowns are forming the centrepiece of his first solo exhibition in the Netherlands: ‘Ugo Rondinone – Vocabulary of Solitude’.

Rondinone gives everyday motifs and images a poetic dimension by isolating or enlarging them. On the floor of the 1500m2 Bodon Galleries visitors can move between life-size clown figures, each engaged in a different everyday activity: sleeping, daydreaming, waking up, sitting, running etc. In this installation, the clown – at the centre of everything and in the middle of nothing – is the personification of unhappiness. Rondinone lets his huge installations speak for themselves. An artwork is successful if the viewer doesn’t have to think and is led naturally in a particular direction: ‘Good art revolutionises your whole being. It is something that stops you, or slows you down.’

The exhibition  is an international partnership and will travel to several other museums after its showing in Rotterdam.

Ugo Rondinone:

From poetic installations in public spaces to life-size drawings: Ugo Rondinone’s work balances on the edge of euphoria and depression. He is one of the world’s leading visual artists. He represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and has had major solo exhibitions at the Pompidou Centre, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Kunsthalle Wien and Palais Tokyo.

Activities and events:

During the exhibition the museum will organise an extensive programme of activities for young and old including a meet & greet with the artist, an expert meeting and children’s workshops.