Ugo Rondinone's Clowns and the Theater of Pathos

In the late 1980s, Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone published a series of drawings that mischievously adopted the format of a coloring book. However, he is less known for his farting rabbits or sado-masochistic children than for staging a pathetic comedy embodied by the made-up, theatricalized figure of the clown, and the rawness and emptiness of films that lay bare reality. Rondinone's clowns—motionless, mute, slouched—offer visitors the singular spectacle of their absolute passivity, sometimes reversing roles with the audience suddenly mocked by pre-recorded laughter, or highlighting the utter uselessness of conventionally back-projected images in exhibitions.