The rainbow of illuminated letters on the roof of the Schirn, a trademark of the artist, can be seen from afar.

His neon installations are based on timeless messages - "Love Invents Us" or "Our Magic Hour" - he has been installing them in various locations for more than twenty years.

The colorful rainbow stretches across all cultures as a symbol between heaven and earth: a symbol for gender freedom, for peace, for transience and new beginnings, that too. In Frankfurt the slogan is "Life Time", which is also the title of the show: Reference to the temporality and finiteness of life.

Rose Maria Gropp

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Inside the Schirn Rotunda there is now a white tree more than six meters high as the "flower moon".

Rondinone cast the sculpture of a two thousand year old olive tree in aluminum and coated it with enamel.

And the moon, companion of magic, meditation and longing, returns in the more than five thousand pictures around the rotunda that children have drawn on black paper under the title "your age, my age and the age of the moon": art accessible to all, understandable to all.

The boundary between nature and culture

The exhibition house covers its entire area with works by Ugo Rondinone.

It is his first major overview show in Germany.

Born in Brunnen in the canton of Schwyz in 1964, he is one of the most internationally renowned contemporary artists.

The show at the Schirn follows the system that actually underlies his work.

The path through the five rooms leads from darkness to light, from night to light.

In this way, a narrative emerges in which the artificial creations mark the boundaries between nature and culture.

They don't do this as impenetrable barriers, but as evidence of those existential passages that are possible for people with their own perceptions.

The first room is characterized by more than four meters high black-ground canvases all around the walls.

They are littered with innumerable white dots and splashes of paint, creating the impression of space, of stars and nebulae, of glimpses of the infinity of time and space.

The titles of the screens also indicate this, for example "Third April Two Thousand and Nine".

A fat man in red trousers and a yellow jacket with a black clown's face is lying on the ground, he too seems to have a timeless figure.

what is he feeling

Is he dismissive, is he dreaming, or is he simply indifferent?

If you look at the fiberglass plastic for a longer time, you can think that the clown will move at any moment;

it is fascinating and should be.

At the far end of the hall, a raven-black wooden door closes off, "zero zany zone".

It really is crazy;