Ugo Rondinone neunzehnterdezemberzweitausenddreiundzwanzig, 2023

Pulsating with brilliant color, Ugo Rondinone's "sun" paintings comprise one of the artist’s most celebrated and longstanding series of works. Executed with acrylic spray-paint on an entirely round canvas, each "sun" painting, as the artist describes them, consists of several bands of hazy color, as though they are emanating from the center of a circle. Each vivid shade is airbrushed into the next, which helps to create the illusion that the work is moving with a hypnotic rhythm and that the canvas is receding into a concave shape.

The "sun" paintings series, which Rondinone first began in the mid-1990s, embraces a number of visual references while forming a distinctive and characteristic body of work. Its optical trickery recalls the captivating illusions of 1960s Op-art, while the bold formal simplicity of the paintings recalls the abstract projects of the color field painters—notably the Target paintings by Jasper Johns and Kenneth Noland in the 1950s and 1960s. Rondinone’s reinvention echoes the objective approach of his 20th century forebears in titling each "sun" painting by the date of its creation, spelled out in full in German. By giving each individual painting a ruthlessly rational name, Rondinone challenges the notion that the works have any meaning beyond their enthralling visual impact.