VIENNA.- Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964) has generously donated his minimalist sculpture arched landscape (2016) to the Belvedere. It is now on view as part of the CARLONE CONTEMPORARY series. The earthen arch is at once an object, an architectural form, and a nod to art history while at the same time making multiple references to the historical ceiling fresco in Carlone Hall, where trompe l'oeil architecture plays a prominent role.

General Director Stella Rollig: With "arched landscape", Ugo Rondinone not only returns to the Belvedere following his first solo exhibition in Austria in 2021/22, but this work also becomes his third piece in the museum’s collection. Displayed under the Baroque pictorial program of Carlone Hall, Rondinone's work opens a space of serenity and contemplation.

Ugo Rondinone has been creating a poetic and conceptual body of work that evokes meditative visual realms that speak directly to the viewer for over thirty years. The works of the New York-based Swiss artist are often grounded in themes and motifs from everyday life, which are imbued with a romantic and melancholic quality through techniques such as isolation, expansion, or specific treatment of the material. At the center of Carlone Hall, Rondinone has installed arched landscape, a massive yet formally reduced arch that not only directs the viewer’s gaze but also frames the view outward. The organic substance of soil lends this majestic sculpture a unique, if paradoxical, sensual quality. This interplay of nature and culture is also reflected in the spatial context, namely the Baroque ceiling fresco by Carlo Innocenzo Carlone of a celestial vault dedicated to Aurora, the goddess of dawn, and the tromp l’oeil architecture by Gaetano Fanti.

Beyond its architectural form, the massive earth sculpture refers to major themes in art history, such as Romantic landscape painting, Minimalism, and Land Art, explains curator Axel Köhne.

Rondinone’s works distill complex meanings into individual motifs: straightforward at first glance and profound and layered upon closer inspection, always with ties to nature and the ideas of Romanticism.

Artist Ugo Rondinone: I never would have imagined that an earth sculpture would one day be in dialogue with Carlo Innocenzo Carlone’s ceiling fresco. It's an amazing concept that introduces a range of contrasts and similarities. Both works share a paradoxical blend of vulnerability and strength, expressing solidarity between man and nature. They also both address the dual connection between the inner self and the natural world. Just as the external world we see is inextricably tied to the internal structure of the self, this juxtaposition allows layers of meaning to come in and out of focus, encouraging the viewer to revel in the pure sensory experience of color, form, and mass while also creating a decidedly contemporary take on the sublime.

Ugo Rondinone was born in 1964 in Brunnen, Switzerland, and lives and works in New York. He studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1986 to 1990 and is now recognized as one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation. His two- and three-dimensional objects, installations, video works, and performances are exhibited internationally. In 2021, Rondinone presented his project your age and my age and the age of the rainbow in the Baroque Garden of the Belvedere, and in 2021/22 the exhibition Akt in der Landschaft / nude in the landscape at Belvedere 21.

The Carlone Contemporary series presents contemporary works in the Carlone Hall of the Upper Belvedere. By interacting with the Baroque pictorial program of the hall’s frescoes, artists draw connections between the pantheon of Apollo and Diana in antiquity and the present.