Paris Autumn Carnival

"Sun rises from the East" December symbolic figure 2009. Every year when autumn is crisp and clear, the Paris Autumn Carnival (Festival d'Automne) begins. Among its comprehensive series of artistic activities, there is always a unique visual arts special exhibition. This year, the renowned Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone was specially invited to present his work in the lush Tuileries Garden from September 17 to November 15. Born in 1964, Ugo Rondinone is currently one of the most representative Swiss artists in the Western art world. He first showcased his talent in the mid-1980s with outstanding installations and performances, continuing to expand his diverse artistic explorations. In his early dramatic performance installations, he often featured humorous clown figures or fashion magazine models, using them as metaphors for the fear and anxiety caused by shattered illusions in contemporary society. Gradually, these figures disappeared, entering an abstract world that draws diverse references from film, literature, theater, and music. In extraordinary monotonous audiovisual environment installations, he hypnotically invites the audience into a dreamlike state. For example, in the video "Sandwich Cigarette," a man endlessly repeats actions accompanied by tedious, monotonous music, presenting the compulsive anxiety of modern people within the realms of reality and dreams.

Ugo Rondinone's overall creation is built upon the abnormal contradictory relationships of today's world and extraordinary psychological and psychoanalytic effects. Mixing vibrant colors with melancholy sentiments, and abstract yet light narrative styles, he presents his work through painting, photography, sculpture, objects, sketches, audio-video, and environmental space installations. His approach carries a slightly ironic cynicism, avoiding all conventional artistic genres within a minimalist, playful, poetic, and abnormally complex world.

In his sculptural exhibition titled "Sun rises from the East," set in the lush Tuileries Garden, he exhibited a series of twelve silver mask-figure statues in memorial form. These figures surround a circular water mirror pool reflecting light and shadows, depicting the cyclical changing of seasons through December symbolic characters. These dreamlike totemic figures possess a primitive and humorous quality, filled with tactile sensation (fingerprints are left throughout), appearing both humorous and grotesque. Their inspiration seems to stem from masks of ancient Western civilizations or costumed figures at folk carnival festivals, approaching surrealism or Picasso's sculptural explorations between reality and dreams.