Ugo Rondinone
the rainbow body
Sadie Coles HQ
22 May – 2 August 2025
Ugo Rondinone’s latest exhibition the rainbow body at Sadie Coles HQ immerses visitors in a vibrant, fluorescent environment painted entirely in rainbow shades. The colours envelop the gallery’s walls, floors, and ceiling, creating a seamless backdrop for a series of figurative sculptures. These polychrome figures, crouching or seated dancers with closed eyes, originate from Rondinone’s 2010 nude series but are transformed here through vivid prismatic colours that evoke a spiritual transfiguration.
The sculptures’ visible joins and fragmented forms challenge traditional realism, emphasizing the interplay between part and whole. This physical fragmentation contrasts with their serene, introspective poses, inviting viewers to reflect on presence, stillness, and the moment. The exhibition references the Buddhist concept of the “rainbow body,” where the physical dissolves into light at the highest spiritual attainment, suggesting the dancers exist in a state between materiality and transcendence.
In the second gallery, a constellation of bronze candle sculptures lies scattered across the floor like votive offerings. These objects, part of Rondinone’s ongoing still.life series, express an oscillation between the everyday and the eternal. Their modest scale and classical bronze medium contrast with the vibrant, ephemeral figures, highlighting different dimensions of time—from the fleeting to the timeless.
Anchoring the exhibition is a handless stained-glass clock that floods the gallery with coloured light. Symbolizing the collapse or singularity of time, the clock evokes the primordial rhythms of nature and humanity’s interconnectedness. Together, the sculptures, colours, and symbolic objects create a contemplative space where the viewer is invited to experience a poetic fusion of body, colour, spirit, and time.
