Ugo Rondinone: the rainbow body

Ugo Rondinone: the rainbow body, is the artist’s first major institutional show in the Western United States in a career spanning over three decades. In his practice at large, Rondinone is celebrated for expansive installations, working with photography, painting, poetry, outdoor sculpture, and neon rainbow signage. His visual vocabulary often incorporates the natural and primordial world, wherein rocks, clouds, trees, and the sun are recurrent motifs. Language and systems of communication such as lyrics or slogans mark other modes of exploring human subjectivity and experience.

the rainbow body considers the multivalent significance of the rainbow. This natural occurrence is at once nature’s most delicate and ephemeral phenomenon, and an emblem rife with mystical aura and political undertones. “The rainbow is a bridge between everyone and everything,” says Rondinone, “nature is not something apart from us, but intrinsic.” The exhibition’s title references a spiritual rite in Tibetan Buddhism in which the body is transformed into light upon death. This conversion is attained only by devoted practitioners and marks the highest form of realization. In this process, the human corpse and mind vanish, replaced by five-colored radiant lights.