Ugo Rondinone and the Absurd

I've wanted to look further at Ugo Rondinone's work for awhile. I was first familiar with his "Hell, Yes" rainbow piece (above) that was on the face of the New Museum. Playful, fun and poppy. Yes, it made me smirk. I took him as a clever joke-ster. His sculptures of funny monstrous face blobs (beige blog smiling above) added to this idea I had about his work. I recognized a darker side in his clowns...but still placed them in a category that was closer to the quick joke than to anything deeper. I had not seen any shows of his - sadly - so I was only seeing a small part of his work and, therefore, was missing the part I would most cherish.

Now, in reading about Ugo's work, I found he was giving us more than a joke...or, rather, pointing out how WE, all of us, are really the joke. I realized this while` reading a review of his show in Australia on www.theage.com.au. In it, Robert Nelson reviews 'Clockwork for Oracle', 2004.

Nelson explains the video space set up in the gallery:

'There are three walls of 24 videos each, set up in grids. They display two films: half the monitors show a man walking along a whole lot of deserted buildings and the other half show a woman doing the same beat....The sequences roll on for as long as you can watch. The longer you attend, the more you experience an illusion, as of perspective: you expect the two to converge but they never do. '

Then Nelson hits on something I cherish - the same way I cherish Samuel Beckett:

'The illusion is psychological, because when you see a man and a woman walking in one space, you can't imagine that their movement is independent.... Our romantic will for them to be united is as absurd as expecting the man and woman to be lovers. We're hard-wired to project a vision on to the world that flatters ourselves. And finally, in this room of abstract motifs without an abstract core, sits a clown, a puppet of a man, dumped on the concrete floor, a good simulacrum of an exhausted imbecile, whose nonsense nevertheless amuses. After making everyone chuckle at so much absurdity, the clown resumes a life which lacks the humour of the stage.'

Absurdity. The clown lives a life without the humor of the stage. He is sitting slumped down on the ground. He is scary, as clowns often are. Ugo's clown looks like a clown in the face - but with it's own unique colors of a full green face, large yellow spaces for eyes and a blue mouth. Green like an alien, green. Or a sick person depicted in a cartoon. He isn't wearing the typical costume. Instead he is loosely covered in a brown fur fabric- like teddy bear skin? He has a large hair 'necklace' hanging from his neck like a member of an aboriginal tribe. Is he supposed to refer to more 'primitive' societies with this costume? Neanderthals- less civilized human ancestors? Closer to our animal selves?

This makes me think of a recent article I read: Thomas Nagel's 'The Absurd'. Nagel leads you through why and how the absurdity of our human existence is found in the situation of our consciousness (and, therefore, our ability to step outside ourselves) coupled with our inability to change being just a human and act at our lives as just a human. The absurdity is felt in our daily lives as we mundanely go through our lives building, making, striving - yet, what we do now will not matter in a million years- Earth and the universe will move along as it does.

Quotes from Nagel about the absurdity of our overall lives:

'Collision between seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt....We have to make choices, live with energy and attention that shows what is taken more serious than others....'

Nagel goes on to speak of ways people can relieve this sense of absurdity. These tactics for relief could be religion or purposely living an existence closer to our animal selves. He does point out that religion still leaves room for doubt and, therefore, the absurdity still exists. And in living a less 'civilized' existence: he reminds us of the extreme effort it would take to do this and, therefore, the level of seriousness the individual would have to take himself in order to live in this way. That level of seriousness would have its own absurdity.

I wonder if that is Ugo's clown- trying to live a more animal existence?

More of Ugo's work:

The lightbulbs. Large, handmade, useless - absurd.

Lastly: the human body sculptures at the top:

These were at Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea in 2010. At first they seem to 'tame?' for his work. They lack the caricature, the cartoon-ish. They are us sad, pensive humans sitting around in non-active poses. The hybridity shown in the lines and color differences are interesting to me. They have the same lines as mannequins - a representation of the human self. All the colors are earth tones that point to our human, biological, earthly selves. The dirt, rock, ground.