A world written in light: in conversation with Ugo Rondinone

Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone, whose practice continues to oscillate between the monumental, intended for antlike audiences, and art that enlightens the existence of the individual, with works that move beyond the purely formal, probing material, colour and weight, and the emotional as experiential. His exhibition more light, 9 June – 22 August 2026, at Sadie Coles HQ, London, offers a fresh opportunity to revisit recurring concerns that have animated his work for decades, of the body, nature, time, melancholy, ritual, and the capacity of the sculptural form to alter our experience of space. Rondinone, as much as he is a sculptor is at the same time an unashamed colourist, claiming that “colour reaches the body before thought”, that “you don’t translate blue, you experience it”, and that sense of the urgency and impact of colour was as eloquently evoked in the writings of German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who coined the phrase “colours are the deeds and sufferings of light”, that once understood, enflames Rondinone’s ambitions for illuminating his work in infinite and intimate spaces”. Light being the least tangible of materials but the most immediate. Before recognising form, colour or distance, as Rondinone would argue, we encounter illumination itself. And for all his intellectual sympathies, Goethe recognised that colour was not merely an attribute of objects but the visible consequence of light entering the world, and few contemporary artists have pursued that proposition with greater consistency or poetic conviction than Rondinone. Swiss-born German artist Paul Klee was convinced “art doesn’t reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible,” and for Rondinone, what becomes visible is often what is ephemeral; light, time, silence, solitude, atmosphere, the passing of one state into another.

For more than three decades, Ugo Rondinone has returned obsessively to a remarkably concise vocabulary of archetypes, the rainbow, the sun, the moon, mountains, trees, horizons, windows, clouds, waterfalls and the solitary human figure. Never applying them as motifs in the conventional sense, nor symbols requiring interpretation. Instead, they formulate and function as recurring states of being, elemental forms through which the artist repeatedly examines perception, memory, solitude, and the passing of time. Rather than continually inventing new subjects, Rondinone has spent his career deepening the expressive possibilities of the few that have accompanied him from the beginning. As he later reflects in this conversation, each new work becomes “another sentence written with the same alphabet.”

And in his hands such consistency shouldn’t be mistaken for repetition. As Rondinone’s practice resembles a long philosophical enquiry conducted through matter itself.

Whether working with watercolour absorbed into raw cotton, fluorescent pigments, cast bronze, monumental stone, wax, earth, trees or neon, his concern has remained remarkably constant, how might material alter consciousness? Sculpture, in such a context, ceases to function simply as an object occupying space, but becomes a condition through which space itself is experienced. As modern French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty observed, “the body is our general medium for having a world.” Rondinone’s works continually remind us that perception is never detached or purely optical; it is bodily, emotional and profoundly spatial. We do not simply look at his sculptures, we move around them, slow before them, measure ourselves against their scale and, perhaps most importantly, discover ourselves differently in their presence.

The London constellation, the song is you at the Royal Academy, light across Bond Street, and more light at Sadie Coles HQ, extends this enquiry in an unexpectedly distilled form. Although realised across three very different sites, Rondinone conceives them not as separate exhibitions but as “three movements of the same composition.” Together they trace a quiet migration from language to public space. The rainbow poem welcoming visitors to Burlington House, the fifty-four flags animated by London’s wind, and the delicate watercolours dissolving into unprimed cotton all ask variations of the same question, how can something as immaterial as light become an experience that is physically and emotionally felt?

It is tempting to understand these new paintings as a departure from the major sculptures that have come to define Rondinone internationally. In truth, they reveal the underlying continuity of his practice. The watercolour doesn’t in any way replace sculpture, and neither should it; it simply reaches the same destination by different means. Throughout the interview, Rondinone repeatedly returns to an idea that unites every medium he employs transformation. Rainbows appear only to disappear, as much as sunrise exists is a prelude to the day becoming a day. Trees pass through seasons of growth and decay, and even stone, the historical emblem of permanence, carries within it the evidence of geological time. His works therefore resist the traditional ambition of sculpture to overcome time through permanence. Rather, they dwell within change itself, asking us to recognise impermanence not as loss but as the very condition of existence. Colour occupies a similarly singular position within this enquiry. Yet Rondinone’s chromatic intensity is never decorative. His fluorescent mountains, rainbow figures and vividly saturated installations refuse to describe the visible world; instead, they construct emotional climates in which viewers become physically immersed. If colour, as German-American artist Josef Albers argued, is “the most relative medium in art,” Rondinone demonstrates that it is also among its most immediate. Before language, before interpretation, colour reaches the body. It alters atmosphere, rhythm and feeling with a directness that thought can only subsequently explain. His colours do not simply illuminate sculpture; they become its emotional architecture.

Perhaps this explains why silence emerges repeatedly throughout the following conversation. Rondinone describes silence and slowness as his “favourite materials,” a statement that at first appears paradoxical. Yet silence, in his work, is neither absence nor emptiness. It is an active condition of attention. The monumental stone figures, isolated trees and contemplative landscapes never demand contemplation through spectacle. Instead, they cultivate a rare stillness in which perception itself begins to expand. Which draws on turn-of-the century Austrian poet and Rainer Maria Rilke’s conviction that works of art do not simply represent the world but quietly transform the conditions through which it is encountered. Rondinone’s sculptures ask remarkably little of us beyond our presence, in return, they offer the possibility of inhabiting the world, if only briefly, with greater awareness.

If this latest constellation begins with light, it ultimately arrives elsewhere. It moves towards colour, matter, weight, demonstrating that these are not separate concerns but different manifestations of the same enduring investigation. Rondinone’s achievement lies not simply in producing memorable objects or environments, but in revealing that sculpture, painting, poetry and public space can all become instruments for recalibrating perception. In an age increasingly defined by acceleration, distraction and spectacle, his work proposes something quietly radical, that the deepest transformations often occur not through movement, but through stillness; not through accumulation, but through reduction; less through certainty, but through sustained attention to the elemental conditions of being. Works by Ugo Rondinone are currently on show at Sadie Coles HQ at Art Basel Paris, 22 – 25 October 2026, with his forthcoming exhibition shaping silence, at Jōju-in, Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Kyoto, 27 October – 12 November 2026.

Rajesh Punj: I see it explained that your three current London presentations, ‘the song is you’ at the Royal Academy, ‘light’ across Bond Street and ‘more light’ at Sadie Coles HQ, as a constellation rather than three independent exhibitions. Why was it important for you to think of these projects as one work unfolding across different sites, and how does each location complete the others?

Ugo Rondinone: I never thought of them as three exhibitions. For me they are three movements of the same composition. It’s an organism. At the Royal Academy, language becomes light. A short poem appears as a rainbow in front of the entrance and welcomes every visitor. On Bond Street, light becomes movement. Fifty-four flags carrying sunrise and sunset paintings are activated by wind, weather and the rhythm of the city. At Sadie Coles, light becomes stillness. The same sunrise and sunset dissolve into intimate watercolours. The three projects move from language to public space, to contemplation. Together they ask how something as immaterial as light can shape our emotional experience of the world.

RP: The paintings in ‘more light’ feel remarkably distilled. Executed in watercolour on unprimed cotton, they hover somewhere between appearance and disappearance, as though they are less images of sunrise and sunset than fleeting states of light itself. What drew you to such an economy of means?

UR: I have always believed that simplicity allows complexity to emerge. The paintings are made with very little: pencil, water, pigment and unprimed cotton. Watercolour is perhaps the closest painting can come to behaving like light itself. The pigment doesn’t sit on the surface; it sinks into the fabric and almost disappears. I wasn’t interested in describing a sunrise or sunset. I wanted to capture the brief moment when light changes from one state into another.

RP: In the exhibition text you describe these works as existing “between appearance and fading away.” Could that also explain your wider practice, where sculpture, painting and installation, often appear in a state of continual transformation. Is impermanence becoming one of the central concerns of your work?

UR: Yes. Everything in my work exists in a state of becoming. A rainbow appears and disappears. The light of sunrise exists only for minutes. Our lives also move continuously between appearing and fading away. I’m less interested in permanence than in transformation. Art allows us to slow that transformation down long enough to become conscious of it.

RP: Light has remained a constant throughout your career, yet here it appears almost dematerialised. Do you think of light primarily as a physical phenomenon, or as a way of speaking about memory, time and human experience?

UR: Light is the first material. Before we recognize an object, we recognize light. It reveals the world, but it also creates atmosphere, memory and emotion. I’m interested in light because it belongs equally to science and poetry.  It is a physical phenomenon, but it is also one of the oldest metaphors for consciousness. I never try to separate those two realities.

RP: Watercolour possesses a fragility and unpredictability entirely different from the permanence of bronze or stone. What has working with this medium revealed to you that sculpture perhaps couldn’t?

UR: Watercolour taught me trust. Stone asks for control. Watercolour asks you to collaborate with water. It always retains its own freedom. That unpredictability became essential to these paintings because sunrise and sunset themselves can never be controlled.

RP: The fifty-four flags installed along Bond Street carry these intimate studies of sunrise and sunset into one of London’s busiest public spaces. What interested you about allowing the works to leave the gallery and become part of the movement, weather and rhythms of everyday life?

UR: I’ve always believed that public art belongs to everyone. The flags transform an ordinary walk through the city into an encounter with the sky. People don’t need to enter a museum. They simply look up. The paintings become part of London’s own weather. The wind completes the work.

RP: At the Royal Academy, ‘the song is you’ introduces language into this constellation as visual form. What is it that language allows you to express that visual form alone can’t?

UR: Poetry can speak directly where images remain open. A poem enters the viewer through language. An image enters through perception. When the two meet, something else becomes possible. My poems don’t explain the sculptures. Nor do the sculptures illustrate the poems. They simply inhabit the same emotional territory.

RP: Seen together, these three projects dissolve the boundaries between painting, sculpture, installation, poetry and public space. Do you still think in terms of separate disciplines, or have they become different manifestations of a single artistic language?

UR: Yes and No. I think in archetypes. A rainbow can become a sculpture. A painting. A poem. A flag. A neon. The medium changes. The archetype remains the same. Each medium reveals a different aspect of the same experience.

RP: Colour occupies an extraordinary place within your work. From these restrained watercolours to the fluorescent mountains, the rainbow figures and your public installations, colour is never merely descriptive, it seems to carry emotional, psychological and almost spiritual weight. When did you first recognise colour as one of the defining languages of your practice?

UR: Colour entered my work through the rainbow. The rainbow fascinated me because it is pure colour without material. You cannot touch it. It exists only through light and water. Since then, colour has never been descriptive for me. It is emotional. It changes the way we inhabit space.

RP: The rainbow has become one of the enduring motifs of your work. Rather than functioning as a fixed symbol, it appears open, to hope, melancholy, celebration, identity and transcendence. What continues to draw you back to it?

UR: The rainbow belongs to everyone. Every culture has looked at one. Every child understands it before language. It can hold grief, joy, celebration, longing and hope simultaneously. It never closes its meaning. That openness keeps it alive.

RP: Your colours often possess an almost burning intensity. They seem to exist somewhere beyond natural observation, becoming emotional rather than optical experiences. Do you see colour as communicating something that language ultimately cannot?

UR: Absolutely. Colour reaches the body before thought. You don’t translate blue. You experience it. Language explains. Colour transforms. Color like music makes you feel.

RP: Although this exhibition centres on painting, sculpture remains fundamental to your practice. Across your work, sculpture often appears less as an autonomous object than as a condition of inhabiting space. Do you think of sculpture primarily as making forms, or as shaping perception?

UR: Shaping perception. A sculpture changes the way we experience everything around it. It changes distance. Scale. Silence. Movement. Space itself becomes the material.

RP: Your sculptures possess enormous physical presence, yet they often feel remarkably quiet. Their weight seems balanced by an extraordinary stillness. Is silence itself another material that you consciously work with?

UR: Silence and slowness are my favourite materials. Silence allows the viewer to hear themselves. I don’t want sculpture to speak loudly. I want it to create the conditions in which something internal can begin speaking.

RP: You return to stone, bronze, aluminium, wax, earth, trees and found objects, materials that already possess strong identities before you begin working with them. What determines your choice of material, and how much do you allow each one to influence the finished work?

UR: I never begin with materials. I begin with an archetype. Then I ask which material already possesses the qualities that archetype requires. Every material carries its own history. I don’t try to erase that history. I collaborate with it.

RP: There is a remarkable duality throughout your sculpture. The works appear monumental and permanent, yet they also suggest fragility, vulnerability and impermanence. Is that tension something you consciously seek?

UR: That tension is life itself. Everything appears permanent while we are living it. Everything reveals itself to be temporary. I’m interested in holding those two truths together.

RP: Your work has about it a sense of melancholic, yet it is equally enriched by optimism, and a tenderness. Do you recognise any of the descriptions, or are you more interested in occupying the emotional space between them?

 UR: I don’t choose between them. Hope without melancholy becomes naïve. Melancholy without hope becomes despair. Life exists somewhere in between. That middle ground interests me.

RP: Solitary figures, trees, rocks and landscapes recur throughout your work, each existing in quiet dialogue with the natural world. What continues to fascinate you about solitude, and the idea of being, as you have described elsewhere, ‘together alone’?

UR: Solitude is not isolation. It is the condition in which we become aware that we belong to something larger than ourselves. Nature has always taught me this. A tree stands alone. A mountain stands alone. Yet neither exists apart from the world around it. Their solitude is a form of connection, not separation. I hope my work creates a similar experience for the viewer: a moment of being fully with oneself and, through that, more deeply connected to everything else. That’s what I mean by being “together alone.”

RP: Over more than three decades of practice, do you feel that you have been asking the same essential questions through different materials and forms, or has the question itself changed over time?

UR: Yes. The questions haven’t changed. Only the materials have. I have spent my career building what I think of as an alphabet of archetypes. Sun, Moon, Rainbow, Lightning, Rain, Mountain, Waterfall, Tree, Window, Wall, Door, Sunrise, Sunset, Waterfall…Each new work is another sentence written with the same alphabet.

RP: If sculpture is ultimately an art of presence, what do you hope remains with someone after they have left the exhibition? And may I ask, what comes next, for both your practice and your thinking?

UR: I hope they leave slightly more present than when they entered. Art cannot change the world. But it can change how we experience one moment. Sometimes that is enough. I don’t think about making something completely different. I continue following my work, following the same small constellation of archetypes. The more deeply I enter them, the larger they become. I have learned that the universal isn’t found by searching for more subjects. It is found by looking more carefully at the few that have accompanied me all my life.