THE SHADOW + THE LIGHT
Twenty years after my first mask sculptures, I returned to the archetype of the mask. This time, I wanted the mask to move beyond representation and become a state of transition; between body and matter, presence and disappearance.
I went to the Hudson River and selected river stones shaped by water, pressure, and time.
Each stone was split in half and hollowed from within. After the two halves were turned and carved out, I chiseled a pair of eyes into each interior surface. A steel rebar fixed to the back suspends the masks against the wall, holding them between weight and levitation.
The masks are not portraits. They are thresholds. Hollowed from the inside, they contain absence as much as form. The chiseled eyes transfix the viewer and draw the gaze inward, toward a place where matter begins to dissolve.
Each sculpture carries a title formed by two opposing conditions: the time + the stillness, the flesh + the ash, the bone + the dust, the body + the shadow, the shadow + the light. The titles unfold as sequences of transformation — moments in which the body gradually passes into air, trace, drift, shadow, and finally light.
The river stone already contains this passage. Formed through centuries of friction and movement, it holds the memory of continual becoming and undoing. By splitting and hollowing the stones, I reveal a hidden interior while simultaneously creating a void. The work moves in both directions at once: toward presence and toward disappearance.
The stone masks are less about identity than impermanence. They suggest the body not as something fixed, but as something in continual transition; where matter in time dissolves into light.
ugo rondinone, may 2026
Martin Szekely, 2000
Set of (8) chairs in cork & birch plywood.
Produced by Galerie kreo, Paris
This model Exhibited: Musee de Arts decoratifs et du Design, Bordeaux France
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