blue blue blue clock (2012)

Ugo Rondinone's 'blue blue blue clock' is part of the artist's series of sculptures collectively called 'clockworks without arms': it is a stained glass clock face with no hands or numbers, made of panels of alternating ultramarine and robin's egg blue cathedral glass, framed in lead. The sculpture suggests our consciousness of time: a clock deprived of hands and numbers seems to be denied its function. The work acts as a reminder that the units of time conceived by humans, and which we use to order and dictate our lives, are ultimately arbitrary.

Themes of time passing and of personal reflection, of mortality and finitude, are typical of Rondinone's work; but 'blue blue blue clock' offers more than just melancholy meditation on life's transience. Rather it inspires to re-consider our conception of time and, as it is intended to be hung in a window and illuminated by natural light, alludes to the pre-digital age, when the passing of the sun across the sky was the only way to track time's passage.