Introduction

Ugo Rondinone's exhibition Unday is centred on binary pairs like interior and exterior, private and public, and it stages the archetypical character of windows (a recurring feature in Rondinone's work) and a light bulb in order to ultimately convey a sense of longing, isolation, and passing of time, that is not on forehand filled with obligations and doings.

Fifteen small-scale paintings are hung in the otherwise empty white space. Almost all of the images depict windows of every shape and size. Open windows and blinded windows, windows with shutters, and ornamentally framed ones. But every voyeuristic desire is left unfulfilled here: there is nothing to see through these windows. They are drawn with pencil on gesso that has been brushed loosely onto coarse canvas, and contrary to Rondinone's large-scale ink drawings of archaic landscapes, they associate futility due to their unfinished character. Only a few of the images depict interiors; an unmade bed, a desk or doors leading from one room to another (never leading outside). On the reverse of each canvas there is a collage made out of images from the daily newspapers corresponding to the day on which it was made and thereby also the title of the it; for example 19. April 2006 (April 19th 2006). A sort of dairy-paintings that lead the thoughts towards a romantic but condemned-to-be-lonely flâneur - a figure remaining isolated as a dreamy observer. The relationship between the isolated artist and his surroundings is an ongoing subject of Rondinone's work, and in this case the separation of public and private spaces is emphasized. A feeling of longing remains the same whether inside or outside.

The unobtrusiveness of the paintings is contrasted by the over-sized wax cast light bulb that dangles heavily from the ceiling in the adjoining room. The title The sixth hour of the poem introduces a temporal dimension, and it reveals that the work is part of an ongoing sequence determined by the number of 24 "poems". The lonely light bulb casts no light, and its function lies only in its associative qualities as it is filling the space with its overall presence of loneliness, as if shouting out loud: isolation. In spite of the diversity in terms of media, the two images that make up Unday intermingle in a diffuse narrative and establish a strong theatrical atmosphere.