SAGAPONACK, NY.- The Madoo Conservancy is presenting sculpting wind by Ugo Rondinone on view in the summer studio through September 13.

A flotilla of black ships occupies the room, each set on a polished concrete plinth with a white top as shiny as the moonlit sea in a 19th-century photograph. Varying in scale, the sailboats recall hobbyist models familiar to this region—or to any seafaring community with a culture of leisure craft. Though perfectly still, the shadowy vessels appear to strain against invisible headwinds. In fact, each is titled after one of the world’s named winds—mistral, pueche, santa ana, tramontane, and others. As the show’s title, sculpting wind, suggests, the artist imagines the ships carving their way through the gusts that propel them, like blades slicing the air. And yet, despite their physical immediacy and graphic force, the title of the exhibition—and of each work suggests that the boats themselves may not be the true subject.

The hulls are pieces of driftwood, shaped over time by the buffeting of waves and, ultimately, by the wind. Aside from the black paint that seals them and a drilled hole for the mast, the driftwood remains unaltered—sculpted not by hand, but by nature and fate. Each mast is a found twig, painted black, its curve implying the wind’s direction. The sails, also black, are painted canvas with raw edges—just as they appear on the stretched canvas sides of old-master paintings. This detail recalls the maritime origins of painting on canvas in Renaissance Venice, where artists first adopted sailcloth as an alternative to wood panels that tended to warp in the humid air of the Adriatic. Canvas has remained the standard support for painting ever since.

Known for the semiotic ambiguity of otherwise straightforward objects, Rondinone typically invites multiple readings. These boats may seem ominous, portentous, even funereal, but we should remember that all sails appear black when seen against the moon. This phenomenon was famously captured by Gustave Le Gray, the pioneering French photographer, in works such as Brig on the Water (1856), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since the 18th century, black sailboats often appear in silhouette paper cut-outs, and are recurring motifs in 17th-century Dutch marine paintings set in the evening. They echo as well through the Romantic tradition particularly in the work of Caspar David Friedrich, whom Rondinone has cited as an important influence. Despite the contemporary and often deliberately artificial appearance of his materials, like Friedrich, Rondinone is deeply invested in the exploration of nature and its spiritual dimension. - Marc Mayer