Giuseppe Penone

 

 

We are pleased to announce a new exhibition of works by Giuseppe Penone, which will be on view at the gallery from May 30th until July 12th 2008.

 

For this exhibition the artist will present five recent works. The sculpture “La Geometria nelle mani/The Geometry in the hands,”(2007) will be displayed on the ground floor with three large graphite drawings on black paper entitled “Pelle di gafite/The skin of graphite,” (2003/2006). The reference to minerals is made explicit in the subtitles of the series, Rodonite, Purpurite and Uraninite. The complexity of lines, shapes and animated surface seem to create palpable forms. 

 

In the lower gallery we will exhibit “Lo spazio della scultura (Pelle di cedro)/The space of the sculpture, (Skin of cedar),” (2001) a large-scale floor installation composed of 24 bronze plates. The bronze plates cover the floor, with the exception of one, which is carried by branches cast in bronze and covered in leather.

 

These plates have been cast from the imprints of the bark of a cedar tree over a hundred years old; in this way they are the negative of the original and not its copy. 

The process of the work refers to the dialectic between the inside and the outside, the space between the hand and the touched surface. The tactile sense is accentuated in this contradictory alliance between the soft and smooth animal skin and the roughness of the bronze on which it lies.

 

 

Giuseppe Penone’s investigation of the twofold aspect of nature – man’s grounding in the material world and the material world’s conversion by man – has been developed in his lifelong production of sculpture, drawings, photographs, and installations. This body of work incorporates binary meanings related to the natural world and the notion of living sculpture. The physical world has been the point of departure for the artist, resulting in correspondences between creation and the act of breathing - for instance - the gesture and the trace, the space and action, the imprint and the sight, nature and the human body.

 

Giuseppe Penone was born in Garessio, Italy in 1947. His work started in 1968 and in 1969 Germano Celant published his work in “Arte Povera”.  From this moment on he was associated with this movement which has its focus in Turin were many of the artists live and work. Sculptural research has been evident in his work since the 1960s and has become associated with the emergence of the rapport between art and nature.

 

In 2001 he was the recipient of the Schock prize for the Visual Arts – reconciling nature and civilization – from the Kungl Vetenskapsakademien, at The Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Stockholm. In 1999 he completed a public project for the Jardin Tuileries in Paris under the auspices of the French Ministry of Culture and in 2001 he realized a commission for the town of Rotterdam, a bronze tree ten metres high, titled Elevazione. In 2007, the artist realised his largest commission: “Il giardino delle sculture fluide/Le jardin des sculptures fluides”, Reggia de Venaria Reale/Italy.

 

The artist’s solo exhibitions include; The Drawing Center/ New York, 2004, the Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris, in 2006 and the Museum Kurhaus Kleve/, Kleve, and most recently in 2008 at the Villa Medici, Rome.

 

Among the numerous group exhibitions, Giuseppe Penone represented Italy in the Italian pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennial.