UGO RONDINONE

Dirimart is pleased to present the sun and the mountain, Ugo Rondinone’s first solo exhibition at the gallery and in Istanbul. Throughout his practice, Rondinone has drawn on natural forms and forces – including seas, mountains, trees, clouds, rainbows, rain and snow – considering them manifestations of the ever-changing nature of life. Bringing together the artist’s twenty recent sculptures from the Mountain series and fourteen sunrise/sunset watercolour paintings from 2023, the exhibition transforms the gallery space into a contemplative landscape, as an invitation by the artist to reflect on the universal experiences that unite us.

Bringing together a poetic sensibility and conceptual rigour, Ugo Rondinone’s distinctive practice explores nature, time, solitude, cyclical rhythms and the human condition, forging a unique dialogue across different periods of art history while enabling his works to resonate emotionally with audiences across diverse cultural contexts. Over the past three decades, Rondinone has continually redefined the relationship between nature, landscape and human experience, producing a substantial body of work that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant.

Among the most iconic bodies of work in Rondinone’s practice, the Mountain series draws inspiration from hoodoos and the art of rock balancing. As visitors move among these sculptures, they encounter forms that evoke shared ancestral responses to the natural world. Rondinone transforms stacked stone forms into monumental meditations on balance, permanence and the humanity’s enduring relationship with nature. The works in the series have been realised at a wide range of scales, from monumental public commissions including Seven Magic Mountains (Nevada Museum of Arts), Doha Mountains, Vienna Mountain, Ermatingen Mountain, Medellin Mountain, Gwangju Mountain, Miami Mountain and Liverpool Mountain, to more intimate gallery installations, where neon- coloured balanced stones form a constellation of sculptural presences.

The verticality of the sculptures is juxtaposed with the horizontality of the watercolours, echoing the encounter between mountain and horizon in nature. Their simplified modularity and luminous colour equally evoke the formal language of Minimalism. These forms function not as metaphors but as  conditions of being. The installation becomes an exploration of how shared emotional experiences can be articulated through different artistic media, each rooted in an encounter with the natural world.

In addressing what art is, Ugo Rondinone explores the intersection of nature’s inherent beauty and the subtle ways in which we perceive the world around us, i.e. the nature, society, and culture. His distilled forms reveal a poetic common ground, suggesting that beauty remains one of the unifying forces through which human experience is shared. 

the sun and the mountain, Ugo Rondinone’s inaugural gallery exhibition in Istanbul, will be on view at Dirimart Dolapdere from 2 September to 8 November 2026.