“I use nature as my vocabulary. Sun moon mountains, trees, rainbows, waterfalls, clouds, and lightning are images that precede language itself. They belong to everyone. In these sculptures, the brief flash of lightning is given permanent form. Cast in bronze and painted in luminous dayglo yellow, the works transform an instant into something enduring, allowing visitors to encounter one of nature's most powerful phenomena not as spectacle, but as presence. Between the architecture of the campus and the open sky, they remind us that the forces shaping the world are both ancient and continuously alive.”

Ugo Rondinone

2026

Ugo Rondinone presents sublime light and blissful light at Allstonway, a new community space within Harvard's Enterprise Research Campus, developed by Tishman Speyer. Painted in bright, dayglo yellow, the bronze light sculptures depict the crooked and rhythmic lines that form strikes of lightning, creating tangible and static representations of these miraculous experiences and awe-inspiring phenomena. Set within the public landscape, the works create a dialogue between the built environment and the forces of nature, inviting visitors into an immersive visual experience.

Often employing natural forms and materials in his work, Rondinone’s examination of nature through painting, drawing, and sculpture alludes to deep, conceptual conversations surrounding the ways in which humans connect to their environments and the elements that comprise them. Lightning bolts, which we ordinarily experience as flashes of light in a storm, also connect to Rondinone’s interest in the earthly realm and the sublime, as seen in German Romanticism and the works of Caspar David Friedrich, whom he has often made references to in his practice. Lightning forms a bridge between the earthly realm and the divine, suggesting the possibility of transcending the physical world and everyday life. Rondinone's light sculptures further recall other natural forms in our everyday life, including inverted branches or the roots of a tree. As such, Rondinone places the quotidian as nothing short of extraordinary.