Ugo Rondinone: The Rainbow Body – A Meditation on Light, Flesh, and Transcendence

22/05/2025

Writer: John Tain

Swiss-born artist Ugo Rondinone returns to Sadie Coles HQ with The Rainbow Body, an evocative new exhibition running from May 22 to August 2, 2025. Best known for his multi-disciplinary practice spanning sculpture, painting, video, and installation, Rondinone continues his long-standing investigation into the poetics of time, nature, and the human condition. In this latest body of work, he blends spiritual symbolism with material tactility, inviting viewers into a contemplative, multisensory space.

At the heart of the exhibition is a new series of life-size wax sculptures of dancers seated in meditative poses. These figures, first developed in Rondinone’s earlier nudes series (2010), now return in full color—each figure crafted from vividly pigmented wax, their seams intentionally visible. The transition from earth-toned realism to radiant abstraction marks a conceptual shift: from corporeal to ethereal, from grounded to transcendental. Their chromatic bodies reference the Tibetan Buddhist notion of the "rainbow body," a spiritual state in which a practitioner’s physical form dissolves into light after death, symbolizing the dissolution of ego and unity with the cosmos.

The gallery itself becomes an extension of the work. Painted entirely in the hues of the rainbow—from floor to ceiling—the space blurs the boundaries between artwork and environment. Visitors are enveloped in a spectrum of color that feels both intimate and infinite. The dancers, each with eyes closed and limbs folded inward, appear to be vessels of quiet energy, positioned like sacred totems within a temple of light.

In a second room, Rondinone presents still.life, a series of bronze-cast extinguished candles arranged like ritual offerings. Their muted presence contrasts with the vibrancy of the main installation, evoking themes of impermanence and introspection. At one end of the space, a color-stained glass clock without hands functions as a poetic anchor, its silence reminding us of time’s suspension and the eternal now.

Rondinone’s work often sits at the intersection of the sensual and the spiritual. Born in Brunnen, Switzerland in 1964, and based in New York since the late 1990s, he has developed a distinctive vocabulary that fuses romanticism with minimalism. Whether through monumental stone figures, poetic neon texts, or meditative landscapes, his art consistently reflects a deep engagement with the cycles of life and the mysteries of being.

With The Rainbow Body, Rondinone distills decades of inquiry into a unified, radiant whole. The exhibition is not only a visual spectacle but also an invitation—to pause, to reflect, and to consider the body as more than flesh, as a vessel for transformation, memory, and light. In a time marked by distraction and disembodiment, this quiet, glowing realm offers a rare sanctuary for presence.