Swiss-born artist Ugo Rondinone is finest identified for monumental stone sculptures. His work, which spans the globe, additionally includes portray, images, video, poetry, and now—as a part of the just-wrapped Design Miami present—jewellery.
With jeweler and shut pal Gazza Graham (each based mostly in New York), Rondinone created seven rings that relate to each planets and the times of the week. Semi-precious stones are inlaid by hand into chunky bands of sterling silver, hand-pounded and solid within the historic lost-wax course of. Symbols of the planets are carved into the aspect of the rings.
The motifs of cycles, time, and spirituality in nature, in addition to a love of coloration—prevalent in Rondinone’s oeuvre over the previous three many years—are obvious within the assortment. Moonstone represents Monday and the moon; garnet pertains to Tuesday and Mars (the crimson planet); Transvaal jade represents Wednesday and Mercury; aquamarine represents Thursday and Jupiter; rhodochrosite represents Friday and Venus; nephrite pertains to Saturday and Saturn; and amber represents Sunday and the solar.
“They seem like they might have been dropped off from a future time, or from 1,000 years in the past,” stated Barbara Mariani, Inventive Director of Jewellery for Carpenters Workshop Gallery, which introduced the rings at Design Miami. It’s the first partnership between Rondinone and the gallery, which itself is increasing its jewellery collections.
At $6,500 a pop, or $35,000 for the set of seven, the rings supply collectors a chance to accumulate work by an artist who’s in any other case out of attain, financially and sometimes spatially. In an version of 30, the baubles will seem on the market on the gallery’s web site earlier than Christmas.
“Ugo has not reinvented the wheel right here,” stated Mariani. “That is infinitely wearable but additionally deeply private. He has at all times liked and worn jewellery.” Rondinone’s paternal forebears, who have been stonemasons in Italy, wore a bit of the stone they labored with round their neck, nearly as a type of id. It was handed down from era to era. “He needed to give you one thing that’s really him,” Mariani defined. “He didn’t simply take his works and make miniatures.”
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