UGO RONDINONE

waterfall

A waterfall has no fixed form. It yields to gravity, to time, to erosion. It falls, disappears, returns. Like breathing. Like consciousness. Like a human life moving toward its own dissolution. In ‘waterfall’ I wanted to create sculptures that inhabit this unstable threshold where matter begins to lose its certainty, where the body and nature become indistinguishable.

The exhibition at Gladstone Gallery consists of twelve vertical sculptures ranging from 3.5 to 6 meters in height. Arranged in an irregular grid, they rise through the gallery like _waterfall_s suspended in the act of falling. Made from transparent resin infused with pigments derived from crushed gemstones, the sculptures hold light within themselves like condensed atmosphere. Embedded inside each work is also a handful of ashes from my own hair and fingernails, a trace of my body suspended within the flow of geological time.

Each sculpture began as a small clay line wrapped around a thin wire and shaped directly by my hands. My fingerprints remained visible on the surface. These fragile forms were later scanned, enlarged, and digitally transformed until the fingerprints dissolved into movements resembling flowing water. What began as an imprint of a body gradually became a current an erosion a vibration.

I understand nature not as scenery but as a psychic and spiritual condition. Mountains, rivers, sunsets, trees, clouds, stars, rainbows and _waterfall_s are among the oldest images we possess. They belong to no culture and no period. They precede us. The waterfall belongs to this lineage. It has no permanent form. It exists only in the act of falling. Every moment it disappears. Every moment it returns.

The sculptures are composed of three distinct forms of matter: transparent resin, pigments made from crushed gemstones, and the ashes from my hair and fingernails. Each belongs to a different order of existence. The resin is synthetic, born of human invention. The gemstones are geological, formed beneath the earth over millions of years. The ashes are biological; the intimate remains of a single life. Artificial matter, geological matter, and biological matter coexist within the same body. Together they bring together different scales of time into a single form: the technological present, the deep time of the earth, and the brief duration of human existence.

The body becomes landscape. Landscape becomes light. What remains is not the image of a waterfall but the condition it embodies: perpetual transformation.

The exhibition also includes three earlier works: the imprint of my hand embedded seamlessly into one wall; an aluminum zero embedded into another, from which incense smoke slowly rises; and a bronze keyhole embedded into a third wall.

Together they quietly describe the space.

ugo rondinone, august 2026