Artist: Ugo Rondinone

Dirimart presents the sun and the mountain, Ugo Rondinone’s first solo exhibition at the gallery and in Istanbul. Bringing together twenty-one recent sculptures from the artist’s renowned Mountain series and fourteen sunrise/sunset watercolour paintings, the exhibition transforms the gallery into a contemplative environment shaped by the elemental forms of mountain, sea and sky.

Throughout his practice, Rondinone has drawn on natural forms and phenomena – including mountains, seas, trees, clouds, rainbows, rain and snow – as manifestations of life’s constant cycles of change. For more than three decades, he has explored the intersections of nature, time, solitude and the human condition, producing works that are both deeply personal and universally resonant.

At the heart of the exhibition is a dialogue between the vertical presence of the mountain sculptures and the horizontal expanses of the watercolours. As Rondinone states: ‘A mountain gives form to the earth. The sea gives form to the horizon. One rises vertically, the other unfolds horizontally. Between them we find ourselves.’ Neither the sculptures nor the paintings depict a specific place; instead, they distil nature into its essential elements of colour, gravity, light and horizon.

Among the most iconic bodies of work in Rondinone’s oeuvre, the Mountain series draws inspiration from hoodoos and the practice of rock balancing. Transforming stacked stone forms into monumental meditations on balance, permanence and humanity’s enduring relationship with nature, the series has been realised at a variety of scales, from major public commissions to more intimate gallery installations. At Dirimart, the sculptures form a constellation of neon-coloured balanced stones that invite reflection on shared ancestral responses to the natural world.

Juxtaposed with the watercolours, whose luminous colours and reduced forms evoke both landscape and abstraction, the sculptures create an environment in which nature becomes a space of emotional and collective experience. As Rondinone writes, ‘Together they create a landscape that exists not outside us but within us, where the physical world becomes an emotional one.’

Through these elemental forms, Rondinone explores the intersection of nature’s inherent beauty and the ways in which we perceive the world around us. His work suggests that beauty remains one of the fundamental forces through which human experience is shared. the sun and the mountain invites visitors to move between the solidity of the mountain and the openness of the horizon, encountering these elemental forms as complementary ways of understanding ourselves and the world we inhabit.

Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964, Brunnen, Switzerland) 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 recent institutional exhibitions at Belvedere, Vienna (2021), Tamayo Museum, Mexico City, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Petit Palais, Paris, Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia, Venice (2022), The Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, Storm King, New York, The Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2023), Museum SAN, Wonju, Museum Würth 2 and Sculpture Garden, Künzelsau, The Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Switzerland, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2024), Arte Abierto, Mexico (2025), The Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan (2025) and Pilane Heritage Museum, Sweden (2025). In 2007, he represented Switzerland at the 52nd Venice Biennale.