Ugo Rondinone burn to shine, 2022

burn to shine film has been premiered at Ugo Rondinone's solo exhibition at Petit Palais, Paris, in 2022. In the exhibition the film was projected onto six screens inside a cylindrical space made of charred wood and forming a circle, a recurring geometric figure for the artist.
The cylinder’s wooden slats exclude any view of the outside; they indicate a path to follow. Since the beginning of his career, Ugo Rondinone has considered it necessary to create an enclosed “isolated” environment facilitating dialogue with nature.

The leitmotif of the film is bodies in movement: 12 percussionists and 18 male and female dancers are gathered around a fire in the desert. Combining an ancestral trance from the Maghreb with the gestures of a contemporary dance conceived with the help of Franco-Moroccan choreographer Fouad Boussouf, they unite with nature from sunset until dawn, when the sun rises again. The diurnal rhythms, the five basic elements of nature, natural phenomena and the conditions of human existence are reoccuring themes in Rondinone's œuvre.