Ugo Rondinone

Esther Schipper, Berlin
Private Collection, Europe
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Dijon, Le Consortium, Ugo Rondinone, Long Nights Short Years, 2004, another example exhibited
London, Whitechapel Gallery, Zero Built a Nest in my Ravel, 2006, pp. 4-5, 227, 244 and 250, another example exhibited and illustrated in colour
Paris, Galerie Almine Rech, Ugo Rondinone: On Butterfly Wings, 2006, another example exhibited

Jean-Philippe Antoine, "Les Territoires Ralentis d’un Egotiste ou la Reserve d’Ugo Rondinone", 20/27 Revue de Textes Critiques sur l’Art, 2007, n°1, p. 9, illustration of another example in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is warmer in the original. The catalogue illustration also fails to fully convey the luminous quality of the semi-transparent resin in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Some dirt adheres to the surface in places, notably towards the base. All surface irregularities are inherent to the casting process.
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A leafless, ethereal-looking olive tree cast in semi-transparent white resin, When the Water Went South for the Winter It Carried Us Down Like Storm Driven Gulls is an exquisite example of the artist’s long-standing inquiry into the nature of time and nostalgia. Each of the five trees selected for this series are ancient, gnarled olive trees from the countryside outside Naples, where Ugo Rondinone’s parents are from, and their titles are segments from one of the artist’s own poems. At once reminiscent of an Arcadian ideal, Nature and the Sublime but also highly artificial, When the Water...is a wonderfully ominous work that defies standardised classifications.

Rondinone’s choice of the olive tree manifests the artist’s concern with developing a vocabulary that is highly charged with wider sets of cultural references: for instance, the olive tree has long been a symbol of peace, immortality and the renewal of life in various religious and pagan iconographies. For the Ancient Greeks, the invincible victor of the Olympic Games wore the crown of wild olives to praise Zeus, and additionally the olive tree was an attribute of Pallas Athena, goddess of peace. For the Catholics, the olive tree has been a symbol of peace since the time of Noah (Genesis 8:11). For the Hebrews, the olive tree stood for both the peaceful election of kings and harmony amongst the people of Judea. Furthermore, an Old Italian expression from the Renaissance and Baroque periods refers to peace as “having an olive branch in hand” – “aver l’oliva in mano”. (Helene Roberts, Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography, Chicago 1998, p. 703)

The olive tree has also been extensively addressed in Art History. In addition to the numerous biblical masterpieces depicting the Christ in the garden of olives, modern masters also tackled the subject of the olive tree. By assembling external elements from the Southern France landscape and his own inside world, emotional turmoil and memories, all the whilst transcending Delacroix’s depiction of the Garden of Gethsemane, Van Gogh’s Olive Trees series was executed in 1889 during his stay at the Saint-Remy asylum in Provence.

Ugo Rondinone’s olive tree is not dissimilar to Van Gogh’s in several aspects: painting the “venerable, gnarled olive trees” helped Van Gogh connect with nature through art, and brought him relief from his illness. He found olive trees, representative of Provence, both "demanding and compelling", as the "rustle of the olive grove has something very secret in it, and immensely old. It is too beautiful for us to dare to paint it or to be able to imagine it" (letter to his brother Theo in 1889).

As for Rondinone, olive trees represented an opportunity to grasp  and freeze the concept of time – which, as the common thread to his entire practice, “gives [him] a certain sense of grounding” (the artist cited in the press release for Creative Time’s project, Art on the Plaza: air gets into everything even nothing & get up girl a sun is running the world, New York, 2007).