10/08/2026
This summer, Ugo Rondinone transforms London into a landscape of light. From the Royal Academy of Arts to Bond Street, the artist's multi-site project unfolds across the city through August 22.
The projects move from threshold, to city, to inner space; from the singular body, to the collective, to consciousness itself, while remaining rooted in the same elemental vocabulary: rainbow, horizon, sky, sun, moon, color, light.
THE SONG IS YOU is a new rainbow poem installed in the courtyard of the Royal Academy. Suspended three meters above the ground, the rainbow creates an arc beneath which visitors must pass in order to enter the Summer Exhibition. The rainbow transforms the threshold of the museum into a moment of passage, guiding visitors from the street into the space of the institution.
LIGHT, consists of fifty-four flags installed on Bond Street, Mayfair. Each flag presents a different sunrise or sunset derived from my ongoing sunrise/sunset paintings, a body of work I began in the summer of 2016. As people move through the city, the flags unfold like a sequence of changing skies, carrying viewers through the rhythm of a day.
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1,2-Installation view, Ugo Rondinone, light, Art in Mayfair, Bond Street, London, 2026. Photo: David Parry/PA Media Assignments
3,4- Ugo Rondinone - The Song is You, 2026, LEDs, acrylic glass, coloured foil, aluminium. 469 x 1022 x 19 cm. Artwork: © Ugo Rondinone. Courtesy the Artist. Photo: © Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photography by Thomas Adank.
