Ugo Rondinone

Arte Abierto presents long last happy by Ugo Rondinone.

Through monumental sculptures and an ongoing public engagement project, Rondinone explores themes of solace, regeneration, and spiritual connection.

In Rondinone’s own words (2024):

“The natural world has held a place of great importance for my artistic practice across several decades. During the AIDS crisis in 1989 and after my partner Manfred Welser died of AIDS-related illness, I turned away from grief and found in nature a spiritual roadmap for solace, regeneration, and inspiration. In nature, you enter a space where the sacred and profane, the mystical and the mundane, vibrate against one another.

The exhibition at Arte Abierto is built upon the principles of three celestial forces from the natural world: the sun, the moon and the rainbow. The sun and the moon (2022), are formed with delicate circles fashioned from cast bronze tree branches, one gilded and the other silver leaved. The twin sculptures are both over sixteen feet tall. Installed parallel to one another, the sun and the moon are aligned along an east-west axis of the Arte Abierto gallery, resembling portals or apertures.

Like the cycle of day and night, these two archetypes represent contradictory, codependent and complementary values. We can think of the sun and the moon as our metaphorical eyes. When the two principles marry, visions become binocular; that is; two visionary bodies of being integrate into one mysterious whole. Based on each one’s unique vision, the sun and the moon bring in different information that contributes to the vision guiding this exhibition and our own wildlife.

These two sculptures are accompanied by two interactive artworks: your age and my age and the age of the sun (2013–ongoing) and your age and my age and the age of the moon (2020–ongoing). The visitors will find, behind a magic door, two rooms filled with thousands of images of the sun and the moon painted by children from all over Mexico. When I visited the space of Arte Abierto, I determined that public engagement would be one of the key aspects of the exhibition. Acknowledging the Foundation’s interest in developing country-wide networks, I asked that my project should be far-reaching. Assisted by Arte Abiertos’s Public Public Program department, I engaged 1,600 children from diverse backgrounds, including children with physical and developmental disabilities, and others from a range of socio-economic realities. Each child was invited to create a drawing for the installation with the promise that there would be no curatorial intervention and every sun and moon drawing produced would be presented.

Outside the exhibition space, on the rooftop, stands LONG LAST HAPPY (2020), a ten-meter-long neon, whose rainbow-striped letters spell out a poetic statement addressed to passers-by. This message of eternal bliss is timeless and unites people over millennia and continents. A rainbow is a bridge that unifies everything with everyone.

With long last happy, Rondinone invites us to contemplate the intersections of life, death, light, and darkness, while offering a message of hope and joy. The exhibition offers a space for solace and reflection, drawing upon the artist's personal journey and his belief in the natural world's spiritual significance.

The interdisciplinary collaboration with various contemporary artists, along with the programs at Arte Abierto that focus primarily on children and young adults, enables us to present the exhibition long last happy by Ugo Rondinone, featuring three works created specifically for the space and two interactive artworks. These celestial bodies serve as a prelude to the celebration and reflection of life on Earth, complemented by a collective piece that emerged from an activation involving children in Mexico.

–Arte Abierto