10 May 2016

Ugo Rondinone's 'Seven Magic Mountains' is a spiritual land art work at the road between Las Vegas and L.A.

Spirituality, meditation are keywords which are associated strongly with the work by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone (born 1964; living in New York). Yesterday on 9 May, his latest work 'Seven Magic Mountains' was unveiled in the desert of Nevada along Interstate 15 - the road from Los Angeles to reach Las Vegas which is ca. half an hour from the seven rainbow colored totem sculptures built at Jean Dry Lake (map). The location is used for fashion shoots, campaign films and has tradition as open-air space for artistic statements. Already the famous land art project by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint-Phalle in the early 1960ies was about nature and human society. Ugo Rondinone's 'Seven Magic Mountains' are made of local limestones - almost as large as cars - and bring together the nature of the mountains on the one side and with fluorescent neon colors the artificial (video interview with the artist). The stones of the 25-30 feet high totems range from three to six. At the first sight, they might remind of Stonehenge, nature religious monuments or mystical sculpture formations which enable the communication with mother earth, the planets and the universe.

The 'Seven Magic Mountains' will be on view for the duration of two years.

fig. above: Artist Ugo Rondinone poses near his creation as Art Production Fund and the Nevada Museum of Art celebrate the opening of Seven Magic Mountains -- Rondinone's large-scale, site-specific public artwork near the Jean Dry Lake south of Las Vegas on Monday, 9 May 2016. Below: Seven Magic Mountains -- a large-scale, site-specific public artwork by the artist Ugo Rondinone -- is seen in a panorama photo looking west near the Jean Dry Lake south of Las Vegas on Monday, 9 May 2016.
Photos: Mark Damon/Las Vegas News Bureau; (C) Las Vegas News Bureau/Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. More photos can be found online under #7magicmountains such as on instagram.com.

Video: Vital Vegas publishes a drone-filmed video.