Ugo Rondinone presents orange yellow hermit (2022) as part of the permanent public art programme at Paddington Square, London, designed by Renzo Piano. This ambitious art initiative represents a major investment into the public realm by Great Western Developments, who commissioned the public art programme working in conjunction with leading London-based cultural studio Lacuna.
The five-metre-tall sculpture addresses the dual reflection between the inner self and the natural world providing a new focal point for the millions of visitors travelling between Praed Street and Paddington station each year. Conceived from limestone models, the monumental work is cast in bronze after scans of the friable material are reconfigured into solid three-dimensional forms using digital tools. Rondinone responds to the stone’s natural, ancient origins in contemporary contexts and environments, opening up onto the world, to nature, and turning inward on oneself.
Stones have been a presence and recurring material and symbol in my art. They are the subjects of the stone figures that I began with the monumental human nature installation at the Rockefeller Plaza in 2013 followed by Seven Magic Mountains in the Nevada desert in 2016. orange yellow hermit will continue to address the dual reflection between the inner self and the natural world. Just as the external world one sees is inseparable from the internal structures of oneself, this work allows layers of signification to come in and out of focus, prompting the viewer to revel in the pure sensory experience of colour, form and mass while simultaneously engendering an altogether contemporary version of the sublime.
— Ugo Rondinone, October 2020
About the artist
Swiss-born and New York-based, Ugo Rondinone is a mixed-media artist. Ugo is recognised as one of the major voices of his generation, an artist who composes searing meditations on nature and the human condition while establishing an organic formal vocabulary that fuses a variety of sculptural and painterly traditions. The breadth and generosity of his vision of human nature have resulted in a wide range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects, installations, videos and performances. His hybridised forms, which borrow from ancient and modern cultural sources alike, exude pathos and humour, going straight to the heart of the most pressing issues of our time, where modernist achievement and archaic expression intersect. He is widely known for his large-scale land art sculpture, particularly Seven Magic Mountains – seven totems consisting of large stones, stacked 32 feet high and painted in fluorescent colours. Ugo is also a poet, collector, and curator.
