zehnteraprilzweitausendundsechsundzwanzig, 2026

Ugo Rondinone’s Sun paintings are among his most celebrated series. Begun in 1992, the Sun works reflect Rondinone’s interests in nineteenth-century German Romanticism and Tibetan mysticism as vehicles to explore natural phenomena and interior states.

Executed with acrylic spray-paint on an entirely round canvas, each painting consists of several concentric bands of brilliant color in feathery circular bands.

Rondinone began the Sun series by directing his gaze inward (a counterpoint to his contemporaneous plein air works), translating his emotional state to circular bands of watercolor on paper. To create distance between these diaristic studies and the viewer, Rondinone then altered the media and scale: expanding the Suns to larger diameter and exchanging tremulous watercolor for seamless airbrush. Maintaining a consistent form and naming strategy—the German date of the work—Rondinone Sun series exists in individual color combinations, ranging from strong contrasts to barely perceptible shifts.