Gladstone Gallery presents Ugo Rondinone’s exhibition “waterfall” at 530 West 21st Street, New York, from September 17 to October 31, 2026. Twelve vertical sculptures of transparent resin, measuring 3.5 to 6 meters, take the form of waterfalls. They contain pigments made from crushed gemstones and ashes from the artist’s hair and fingernails. The works originated as small clay models shaped by hand, then scanned, enlarged, and digitally transformed so that fingerprints dissolved into flowing lines. Installed in an irregular grid, they rise through the space like suspended cascades. The exhibition also includes a hand imprint set into a wall, an aluminum zero emitting incense, and a bronze keyhole.

Ugo Rondinone: Waterfall / Gladstone Gallery, New York. September 17, 2026.

Press text (excerpt):

Ugo Rondinone presents “waterfall”, an exhibition of new sculptures at Gladstone in New York. Opening September 17, monumental waterfall sculptures reflect Rondinone’s preoccupation with the natural world.

Gladstone presents an exhibition of new monumental sculptures by Ugo Rondinone at its 21st Street space in New York, featuring twelve waterfalls in the form of semitranslucent resin pours, ranging from 11 to 20 feet in height. Initially sculpted in clay with tactile traces of the artist’s hand, the waterfalls were transformed through the casting process and radiate with individual hues that emulate organic colors found in nature; crushed gemstones, along with ashes from the artist’s own hair and fingernails, are embedded within the resin. These large-scale, vertical spills recall a previous sculpture exhibition by Rondinone at Gladstone’s 21st Street gallery, bright light shining, which showcased chartreuse lightning bolts inspired by inverted tree branches. waterfall, once again fills the space with the shock of forms distilled from nature approximating in scale their visual impact in the natural environment. A concurrent exhibition of Murano glass fish sculptures by Rondinone will be on view at Gladstone’s space in Brussels.

A publication featuring essays by Laura Hoptman and Marc Mayer is forthcoming.

The exhibition is accompanied by a statement written by the artist:

waterfall

A waterfall has no fixed form. It yields to gravity, to time, to erosion. It falls, disappears, returns. Like breathing. Like consciousness. Like a human life moving toward its own dissolution. In ‘waterfall’ I wanted to create sculptures that inhabit this unstable threshold where matter begins to lose its certainty, where the body and nature become indistinguishable.

The exhibition at Gladstone Gallery consists of twelve vertical sculptures ranging from 3.5 to 6 meters in height. Arranged in an irregular grid, they rise through the gallery like waterfalls suspended in the act of falling. Made from transparent resin infused with pigments derived from crushed gemstones, the sculptures hold light within themselves like condensed atmosphere. Embedded inside each work is also a handful of ashes from my own hair and fingernails, a trace of my body suspended within the flow of geological time.

Each sculpture began as a small clay line wrapped around a thin wire and shaped directly by my hands. My fingerprints remained visible on the surface. These fragile forms were later scanned, enlarged, and digitally transformed until the fingerprints dissolved into movements resembling flowing water. What began as an imprint of a body gradually became a current an erosion a vibration.

I understand nature not as scenery but as a psychic and spiritual condition. Mountains, rivers, sunsets, trees, clouds, stars, rainbows and waterfalls are among the oldest images we possess. They belong to no culture and no period. They precede us. The waterfall belongs to this lineage. It has no permanent form. It exists only in the act of falling. Every moment it disappears. Every moment it returns.

The sculptures are composed of three distinct forms of matter: transparent resin, pigments made from crushed gemstones, and the ashes from my hair and fingernails. Each belongs to a different order of existence. The resin is synthetic, born of human invention. The gemstones are geological, formed beneath the earth over millions of years. The ashes are biological; the intimate remains of a single life. Artificial matter, geological matter, and biological matter coexist within the same body. Together they bring together different scales of time into a single form: the technological present, the deep time of the earth, and the brief duration of human existence.

The body becomes landscape. Landscape becomes light. What remains is not the image of a waterfall but the condition it embodies: perpetual transformation.

The exhibition also includes three earlier works: the imprint of my hand embedded seamlessly into one wall; an aluminum zero embedded into another, from which incense smoke slowly rises; and a bronze keyhole embedded into a third wall.

Together they quietly describe the space.

About Ugo Rondinone
Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964, Brunnen, Switzerland) studied at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna before moving to New York in 1997 where he currently lives and works. His work has been the subject of solo presentations at the Centre George Pompidou, Paris (2003); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2006); Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (2013); Rockbund Art Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2016); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Roma, Rome (2016); Carré D’Art, Nîmes, France (2016); Berkeley Art Museum, California (2017); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2017); Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2017); Belvedere, Vienna (2021); Tamayo Museum, Mexico City (2022); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2022); Petit Palais, Paris (2022); Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia, Venice (2022); The Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva (2023); Parrish Museum, Water Mill, New York (2023); Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2023); Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York (2023); Museum SAN, Wonju, Korea (2024); Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland (2024); Würth Museum, Künzelsau, Germany (2024); Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2024); Madoo Conservancy, Sagaponack, New York (2025); Pilane Sculpture Park, Tjörn, Sweden (2025); and Institute de France, Paris (2025).