Ugo Rondinone

Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber, Zurich
The CAP Collection, Switzerland
Christie's, London, The CAP Collection, 20 June 2007, Lot 13
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the previous owner

Arlène Bonnant, CAP Collection, Switzerland 2005, p. 245, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals an extremely short, thin and unobtrusive rubmark towards the centre of the right outer edge. Visible only when examined upon extremely close inspection in raking light, there is a very shallow and superficial rubmark towards the centre left of the composition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Both playful and meditative, Siebterjulineunzehnhundertsiebenundneunzig is a consummate example of Ugo Rondinone’s genre-defying practice. Within the artist’s seemingly heteroclite creative output - which encompasses every possible media from sculpture to video, painstakingly-detailed ink drawings to neon installations - Rondinone’s target paintings are arguably his most iconic body of work. Their titles, which are their execution date in German, reference elements of time and duration which are crucial to understanding Rondinone’s oeuvre. Rondinone's works can thus be read as visual poetry, and their titles potent tools to suffuse the underlying atmospheric notions of slowness and obsessive repetition that ties them together. 

The hazy, colourful concentric circles pulsating against the surface of the tondo in Siebterjulineunzehnhundertsiebenundneunzig echo the classic bullseye-type target, urgently demanding focus, but also depart from their purpose. In lieu of stark, contrasted lines, the present painting displays a spiral of blurred, cloud-like bands of uneven widths, creating an optical illusion which makes visual focus impossible. By giving the beholder mixed signals, the present work masterfully reasserts Rondinone’s outstanding dexterity of dichotomies by way of perpetually calling into question that which is simply assumed and taken for granted.