Air gets into everything even nothing by Ugo Rondinone

Facts

Material

Cast aluminum, white enamel
 

Size

405 cm × 375 cm × 340 cm
 

Description

Ugo Rondinone is interested in the existential dimension of things—time and evanescence, reality and fiction, day and night, nature and culture. Often his work takes a decidedly romantic and melancholic twist. Fittingly, the Swiss-born and New York-based artist deploys almost archetypical motifs like sad and depressed clowns, gigantic stones and rocks, colourful rainbows, or trees. 
With his poetically titled pieces, Rondinone creates works that are deliberately simple and easy to understand yet come loaden with a dreamlike and enigmatic symbolic atmosphere. Ultimately, the artist is concerned with our own role the world’s ever-recurring cycles. “I see the world as a mysterious place where appearances are deceptive and ultimate reality is rarely perceived,” he once said. „A world where each individual creates its own time and space.”
The sculpture air gets into everything even nothing (2006) is cast from an ancient olive tree. Gnarly, stout and almost brought down by a life on the verge of eternity, this tree seems to embody the passing of time itself. Cast in aluminium and coated in white enamel, it confronts us with the astonishing endurance of life and, at the same time, its inevitable end. When time stands still, we are reminded of its persistent movement. 

Location

Zurich