Ugo Rondinone, Six Small Mountains, 2016

Hi, my name is Vivian Li. I’m a UChicago student and a mixed media artist. “Six Small Mountains” is composed of six stones painted in bright, fluorescent pigments. Each sits on their own gray concrete base, placed together in two rows, creating a three-by-two formation with roughly the same distance in between. The stones are uniquely shaped and each has an electric color—green, magenta, red, yellow, orange, and pink.

They don’t look like stones. But instead, artificial objects made of pure color meant to invoke sensations. As Rondinone says during interviews: “colors are universal, it is a visual language with no linguistic bounds.”

These colors are the brightest colors I have ever seen, and their vibrancy intensifies the feelings I have when I touch them with my eyes. As a painter, I see the world through colors and their various associations. Blue reminds me of the ocean. Green reminds me of soft meadows and mountains full of pine trees while driving down the coastline. Yellow reminds me of sources of light, a positive ray of energy. Orange is cozier, like having a fireplace in the winter. Red is passionate and all-consuming, like eating hot chili peppers or the sweetest strawberries, where the taste lingers. Magenta is mysterious and intoxicating, like carnivorous plants in the tropics. Bright pink is angelic, innocent, but also hopelessly romantic.

To see and experience the associations all at once is a bit of a sensory overload, but it informs me of the different facets of life and the complexity of my own emotions. The colors represent the spectrum of my human experience.