SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.- Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art is aglow with a major installation by leading Swiss artist, Ugo Rondinone. The 11 meter high rainbow, featuring the words OUR MAGIC HOUR, has been installed on top of the northern end of the Museum’s building.
The installation, which coincides with an exhibition of Rondinone’s work at the MCA (25 June – 31 August), is the latest in a series of similar neon installations exhibited around the world including HELL, YES! London; KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, Rome; DOG DAYS ARE OVER, Rome; CRY ME A RIVER, Siena; and A HORSE WITH NO NAME, New York.
Exhibition curator Russell Storer said of the work, “The poetic, circular phrase OUR MAGIC HOUR sounds like something you might have heard before, but can’t quite place. A lot of Ugo’s works use wordplay, repetition, and circular motifs, soundtracks and phrases, often referring to music, literature and poetry. His neon works take art out of the gallery and into the world. They look like advertising neon, but they signify no corporation or product; instead, they signal an exhibition, and are artworks in themselves. The rainbow is a symbol of hope or joy – but it is also melancholy: a transient, elusive phenomenon, a trick of the light.”
Labeled a ‘multimedia romantic’, Rondinone produces drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos and installations that invoke powerful emotional states. “His poetic works are often accompanied by soundtracks and atmospheric lighting, and draw on aspects of cinema, art history, literature, fashion photography and pop music. The artist’s installations also recall stage sets or nightclubs, creating similarly intoxicating moods of melancholy and desire”, said Storer.
Born in Switzerland, Ugo Rondinone studied at the University of Applied Art in Vienna and is now based in New York. His work has been shown in major exhibitions throughout the world including the São Paulo, Istanbul, Berlin and Melbourne Biennales. Major solo exhibitions of his work were recently held at the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria, and the Pompidou Centre, Paris.
