You need know nothing about Ugo Rondinone (Brunnen 1964) to understand what his work is all about. Old gnarled trees, tiny birds, bronze horses: they are the same and yet all different - and this also applies to the primitive human figures made up of rough blocks of stone. Constantly recurring motifs are the clown and the rainbow, whereby the first portrays in all its colourful splendour an individual that must rely completely on himself, while the rainbow, with the same colours and a poetic text, shows how we people are connected with each other.

But even if his work is immediately understood by everybody (even or perhaps particularly by children), it is still interesting to hear what people who know Rondinone have to say about him. Film-maker Hans Wessels travelled to New York and Zurich to talk to gallery owners Barbara Gladstone and Eva Presenhuber, MoMA curator Laura Hoptman and the poet and artist John Giorno, who is also Rondinone’s life partner.

This video was made in the context of the exhibition ‘Ugo Rondinone - Vocabulary of Solitude’, which will be on show in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen from 13 February to 29 May 2016.