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| ABOUT TRaC |
Visual Arts TRaC Fall 2004
Blank by Ugo Rondinone Heart wrenching monotony. Underscored agony. Absolute mockery. Ugo Rondinone's new exhibit entitled BLANK is an utter success. The door to the building leads to a world of melancholy amusement and lingering time. The minutes slow as one becomes immersed in a dreary perception of existence. Life is removed and substituted with being. One room is divvied into two by three rows of ceiling to floor chains; steel chains suspended diagonally. The walls are white and the masks are black. A heavy black material, clay maybe. There are twelve massive masks on the wall, all facing the center of the half-room. They give off twelve sardonic, eyeless stares. The middle contains a large glossy black structure. It is composed of pillars, about BLANK feet high, in a geometric structure with identical pillars connecting the tops. It is a maze and as you walk through it you begin to notice the sound. The repetitive, vague tinkling of bells; it is the sound of this world. You walk through the pillars and buy into it. You become possessed. And in your trance, you notice some white at the bottom of each glossy black pillar. Small, white drawings of a duck. A duck s face and a human body. Hollow, indirect eyes always staring straight but never connecting, in every picture on every pillar, all depicting different things. Duck lies in bed on pillow. Duck eats cereal in the kitchen. Duck stands near door; watches doorknob. Duck doesn t live but survives and masks deride it. Monotony. Agony. Mockery. You gain consciousness and look across the room through the chains. You see whimsical crystal-like trees. Beige and bear resin. They are effervescent and fake. Through the chains and the trees and the music and things, you see a window. BLANK feet, on the wall and plain, like the life in this world. The outside is white, just like the duck, just like walls and music. White and bland. The window frame is gray. Gray and white. "This is life," it yells. And that is all you can see from the half-room. You see the duck and the pillars and through the chains you see the trees and through the trees you see the white of the outside, the gray of the in, all with the music, which repeats and repeats until you feel sick to your stomach and you see a previously absent opportunity. There is an entrance to the second half-room, a break in the chains on the left. You make your cautious way across and you look right and see a window. A new, bright window. It is the colors of the sun, with yellow pouring in from outside and orange covering the window frame. You shock and turn left and you see another, the black oozing from outside and dark blue on the frame. It is a brilliant glossy vividness. You stand in the second half room and you realize that Rondinone is a troubled soul, and you see what he is telling you and you buy into it because the sound has seeped into your soul and you feel it. The right and the left in the second half-room are not real, are preferred and the rest is all. They are the extremes and Duck and you are the means. And the music keeps on.
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