Introduction
Opening on August 10 2019, Guild Hall presents sunny days, a solo exhibition by Ugo Rondinone featuring sun-themed sculpture and paintings, as well as a collaboration with area school children. The exhibition, which explores the sun as a motif and metaphor, is divided into three parts: paintings, sculptures, and a community art project.
In a new series of eight "sun paintings", Rondinone references the radiance and universal symbolism of the sun. He has incorporated this imagery in his work since 1991, and uses canvas spray-painted with soft concentric yellow rings as a representation of the sun and the impossibility of seeing its form with the naked eye.
A selection of large sun sculptures will be placed at alternating angles in Guild Hall's Moran Gallery. These large-scale circular rings are made from vine branches which were cast in aluminum and then gilded. The artist chose to depict the vine as a symbol of renewal because of its life cycle from growth to dormancy and rebirth to a fruitful state every year-reminiscent of the solar cycle.