Ugo Rondinone what do you want?
First encountering what do you want? was like stepping into some other world. Walking into the installation, you’re met with a large mirrored wall that is broken into a thousand fragments, distorting everything being reflected, including yourself, as you move through the space. On the ground is a sculpture of a clown lying down, intriguingly titled if there were anywhere but desert. wednesday. It’s so eerily realistic, that when I first saw it, I thought it might have been a living performer.
But what really held me was the sound that emerges from within the wall: a continuing dialogue of questions back and forth between two people asking, ‘What do you want?’ ‘What do I want?’ ‘Yes, what do you want?’ ‘I don’t want anything,’ and so on. The narrative is elusive and heavy; banal, familiar, dark and funny. It feels like you’ve found yourself on the set of a TV drama set in 1960s New York, waiting to see what unfolds. It’s certainly strange, but in all the right ways.