The artist as sleeper, dreamer, or else as a clown, prostrate on the ground – in his works Ugo Rondinone often ventures into the uncertain terrain of emotions. The ground vibrates with his undulating lines, voices coming from unexpected sources sing in the visitor's ears, and the installations are made up of objects which seem as alien as they do familiar. They present themselves to the visitor like impressions of déjà-vus and sensations which are indefinable and yet familiar: in front of the visitor are balls, walls and columns of smithereened mirrors, or else, as here, highly suggestive spaces with huge pebble-like stones from which wafts a voice, and which, flying in the face of all physical probability, seem to be in midair beneath the ceiling. Rondinone confidently sketches snippets of experience that are both subjective and archetypal: dreamlike realities. By urging visitors to touch, look at and listen to, this art gives priority to their instinctive perception. So the visitor experiences his/her body as a source of knowledge, and becomes a participant in this kind of “performance poem”. In Rondinone's titles we already sense the poetic and nostalgic suggestion of his works. And like the men and women who, in the subtitle*, float past the awareness of the lyrical “I”, we too slide into this square installation space. An artificial dayglo yellow horizon surrounds the three huge river pebbles painted dazzling white which hang from the ceiling. In order to pass them, we involuntarily slacken our step and hesitantly, and slightly disorientatedly, approach the four small white video monitors on which spectacular scenes are being transmitted in a continuous loop. Here, too, levity reigns: we see a car that is forever crossing the screen, a snowy landscape, a clothed man's body adrift in the water, and a naked woman jumping tirelessly into the air. The rhythm of the images is accompanied by a sentence that also goes round and round: “What could be better, nothing is better.” In the almost hypnotic magic of this linguistic music, the scenes give the impression of being universal memories. If it so happens that in other works we are witnesses to an inner quest (as in Roundelay, 2003), in this one we come on stage like real protagonists. We walk along this brief circuit that leads us in repeated circles around three pebble-sculptures as if they were mermaids – but at the same time in ourselves as well. The unusually large scale of the stones ideally slows down our progress, and little by little we are floating rather than walking. The private and enigmatic character of this white world surprises and bestirs us to fill the space with our own reality. We know this procedure full well in the interference of his black-and-white photos, the trembling of his neon poems and his target paintings, and the use of immaterial music and voices which create an atmosphere. Those who let themselves be surprised, and drawn for a moment into Rondinone's work feel throughout their bodies that conviction held by Mallarmé: “To name an object is to get rid of three-quarters of the enjoyment of the poem. [...]; to suggest it – there's the dream.”

Gaby Hartel

Translated by Simon Pleasance