Ugo Rondinone: burn shine fly

Published on the occasion of burn shine fly, presented during the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2022, the project title is derived from the book of poetry and prose You got to burn to shine by John Giorno, the late American poet and partner of the artist.

The publication surveys a number of Rondinone’s most iconic bodies of work brought together at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, as well as insights to new work specifically created for this project; conveying the distinct sensitivity and site-specific discourse with which the artist approaches exhibition-making.
Encompassing a diverse array of media, burn shine fly mediates themes that have come to define the artist’s practice over the past three decades. Primarily the enduring exploration of the multivalent potentials for the physical to express the metaphysical, spiritual, and transcendental, of which he has stated: ‘the work aims to coax the sublime from the subliminal. It should dazzle us and then send us into deep reflection about the marvels and mysteries of life.’