Ugo Rondinone (b. Brunnen, Switzerland, 1964, lives in New York) works with a wide range of media, from painting, graphic work and sculpture to photography and video. He is best known for his large-scale spatial installations featuring combinations of light, sound and architecture. Underpinning his work is a range of references to art history and popular culture. By isolating, expanding or giving a specific material treatment to everyday objects, he lends them a poetic character. Recurring motifs in his work are universal symbols such as trees, clouds, animals, clowns, circles and rainbows. It is the artist’s enormous versatility that has led to him participating in Lustwarande for the fourth time. In the 2004 edition, he wrapped a dying tree from head to toe in silver gaffer tape. Around the foot of the tree, he built a small pedestal, and he hung a monumental wind chime from one of the thickest branches. Jahrestage was the title of this work, and it brought the tree back to life. For the 2015 edition, he presented a new work, the thoughtful, a monumental, seven-metre-high primitive figure consisting of five stacked blocks of bluestone, an ode to the oldest of sculptural traditions, the creation of idols. For the 2009 edition, Rondinone made a square surface of fluorescent yellow pebbles on the forest soil, which contrasted sharply with the natural environment. Pagan void (2009) was not only an abstract work that referred to ancient cultures and rituals; it also played with the fluid dividing line between real and false, between fact and fiction. The work he made for STATIONS did the same. This time, too, he succeeded in creating a dream landscape that transported visitors to another world, a different reality.

On either side of the French pond, there are wooden decks with wooden benches on which visitors can sit to look out over the water, which is often beautifully covered with water lilies. Rondinone covered the deck and the bench on the east side of the pond with gold foil, and the ones on the west side with silver foil. The result was a wonderfully romantic image that evoked associations with the fable about the impossible love between the sun and the moon. The sun was madly in love with the moon but saw only a glimpse of her as he went down and she came up. He felt lonely and so he set later and later every day, so that he could see more of her. The moon forbade him to do so, as this was their fate. From then on, however, she had the sun greeted every morning by the morning star and every night by the evening star (both Venus). Rondinone aptly titled this work the sun and the moon. From their golden or silver lookout posts, visitors could enjoy a magical experience of the surroundings, which are already beautiful in their own right.