UGO RONDINONE

primordial (rainbow)

Fish are among the oldest living forms on Earth. They emerged long before birds, mammals, or human beings, inhabiting an ancient ocean from which all complex life eventually evolved.

In 2016, I modeled forty-seven fish in clay and cast them in raw bronze. Each fish was given the name of a natural phenomenon; cloud, rain, lightning, mountain, moon, wind, as though every force in nature emerged from the same primordial source. Together they formed primordial.

Ten years later, the fish return to Gladstone Gallery in Brussels, occupying the very same rooms in which they first appeared. Their forms remain unchanged, yet they have undergone a transformation. Cast this time in colored glass, they no longer absorb light but hold it within themselves. The heaviness of bronze gives way to transparency. What once felt geological now becomes luminous.

The installation unfolds as a dialogue between two moments in time. The gallery remembers the earlier work, while the new material allows it to be experienced anew. Nothing has changed except the substance from which it is made, revealing how identity can remain constant while perception shifts.

The title, primordial (rainbow), marks this transformation. Primordial evokes the origin of life, while rainbow suggests the passage of light through matter. The fish remain ancient creatures, yet they now appear suspended between the depths of the ocean and the openness of the sky. They drift through space like living constellations, each distinct, yet together forming a larger field.

As throughout my work, nature becomes a universal language. The fish are not illustrations of the natural world but archetypes through which we recognize ourselves. They remind us that every living being, every landscape, and every natural phenomenon belongs to the same continuous cycle of transformation; from matter to light.

ugo rondinone, august 2026