UGO RONDINONE

The first part, THE SONG IS YOU is a new rainbow poem installed in the courtyard of the Royal Academy. Suspended three meters above the ground, the rainbow creates an arc beneath which visitors must pass in order to enter the Summer Exhibition. The rainbow transforms the threshold of the museum into a moment of passage, guiding visitors from the street into the space of the institution.

The second part, LIGHT, consists of fifty-four flags installed on Bond Street, Mayfair. Each flag presents a different sunrise or sunset derived from my ongoing sunrise/sunset paintings, a body of work I began in the summer of 2016. As people move through the city, the flags unfold like a sequence of changing skies, carrying viewers through the rhythm of a day.

The third part, MORE LIGHT brings six sunrise and sunset images into the intimate space of the gallery. The paintings are made with watercolor on unprimed cotton using the most reduced means possible: a horizon line and a circle or halfcircle lightly drawn in pencil, followed by loose washes of color whose edges remain open. The simplicity of the works with its loose watercolor washes allows the image to exist in a state between appearance and fading away.

Together, the three parts form a progression: from the embodied encounter of the ‘song is you’, to the collective and public experience of ‘light’, and finally toward the meditative interiority of ‘more light’. The projects move from threshold, to city, to inner space; from the singular body, to the collective, to consciousness itself, while remaining rooted in the same elemental vocabulary: rainbow, horizon, sky, sun, moon, color, light.

Across all three parts, light remains the constant element. Not as metaphor, but as a condition of being. Sunrise, sunset, are universal images that belong to no one and to everyone at the same time. In these works, light becomes a way of thinking about presence, impermanence, longing, and the continuous passage of time.

ugo rondinone, May 2026

Ugo Rondinone was born in 1964 in Brunnen, Switzerland. He studied at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna before moving to New York in 1997, where he lives and works to this day. His work has been the subject of solo presentations at Royal Academy of Arts, London (2026); Bond Street, Mayfair (2026); Institut de France, Paris (2025); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (2025); The Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan (2025); Arte Abierto, Mexico City (2025); The Madoo Conservancy, New York (2025); The Watermill Center, New York (2025); Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich (2025); Pilane Sculpture Park, Tjörn Island (2025); Reiffers Art Center, Paris (2024); Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2024); Museum Würth, Künzelsau (2024); Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern (2024); Museum SAN, Wonju (2024); The Phillips Collection, Washington, (2023); Fosun Foundation, Shanghai (2023); Galerija Kula, Split (2023); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2023); Parrish Art Museum, New York (2023); Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2023); Storm King, New York (2023); Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Genève, Geneva (2023); Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia, Venice (2022); Manifesta 14 Prishtina, Prishtina (2022); Qatar Museums, Doha (2022); Petit Palais, Paris (2022); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2022); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2022); Sculpture Milwaukee, Milwaukee (2022); PODO Museum, Jeju (2022); Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland (2021); Belvedere, Vienna (2021); The National Exemplar, Iowa City (2021); Lustwarande, Tilburg (2021); Belvedere 21, Vienna (2021); Triënnale Kortrijk, Kortrijk (2021); SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Norway (2021); Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp, Cully (2021); The National Exemplar, Iowa City (2020); Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome (2020); Museo de Arte Moderno Medellín, Medellín (2019); Beaux-arts de Paris, Paris (2019); Kunsthalle Helsinki, Helsinki (2019); Guild Hall, New York (2019); Carré d’Art, Chapelle des Jésuites, Nîmes (2019); The Contemporary Austin, Texas (2018); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2018); Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles (2018); Malta International Contemporary Art Space, Malta (2018); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles (2018); Fundación Casa Wabi, Oaxaca (2018): ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj (2017); in 2017, a major retrospective took place across leading cultural spaces in New York including The Kitchen, White Columns, Artists Space, The New Museum, The High Line, Sky Art, Swiss Institute, Red Bull Arts New York, Hunter College Art Galleries, New York (2017); The Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2017); Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2017); Château de Versailles, Versailles (2017); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2017); Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2017); Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2017); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California (2017); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2017); MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome (2017); Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2016); Carré d’Art-Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes (2016); MACRO, Rome (2016); Mercati di Traiano, Rome (2016); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2016); Art Production Fund and Nevada Museum of Art, Las Vegas (2016); The Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston (2016); Place Vendôme, Paris (2016); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015); Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney (2015); Secession, Vienna (2015). Forthcoming exhibitions include the Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Kyoto and Piazza della Signoria, Florence.

Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ.