Ugo Rondinone: giorni d’oro + notti d’argento

The exhibition “giorni d’oro + notti d’argento” by Ugo Rondinone will be divided between two of the capital’s most important institutional spaces: the MACRO Testaccio, the finest example of industrial archaeology and the Mercati di Traiano, a symbolic monument to imperial antiquity.

In the two locations the Swiss artist has devised a unique itinerary which will be developed around 2 great environmental installations conceived as 2 cycles, giorni d’oro + notti d’argento, which will transform the spaces into fantastic settings, where the visitor can engage with the works as a visual and conceptual experience.

Pavilion 9B of the MACRO Testaccio will house giorni d’oro  + notti d’argento, which gathers together some of the artist’s works in a dazzling setting dominated by lights and colours and animated by the large installation vocabulary of solitude,which after the success at the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam, will arrive for the first time in Italy and will move on next December to the Bass Museum in Miami, for the forthcoming Art Basel. The work consists of 45 clowns which with their 45 different postures, represent activities of everyday life, at the same time expressing the anguish of human solitude:be. breathe. sleep. dream. wake. rise. sit. hear. look. think. stand. walk. pee. shower. dress. drink. fart. shit. read. laugh. cook. smell. taste. eat. clean. write. daydream. remember. cry. nap. touch. feel. moan. enjoy. float. love. hope. wish. sing. dance. fall. curse. yawn. undress. lie.

The exhibition at the MACRO Testaccio will be enriched by the presence of hundreds of rainbows designed by the students of the schools of Rome, involved directly by the artist in collaboration with the museum’s Education Department.