ART-PRESENTATION: Giuseppe Penone-Equivalenze

Giuseppe Penone, Equivalenze –12 aprile 2016, 2016, Metal, acid, terracotta     88x140x20 cm, © Archivio Penone, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Giuseppe Penone, Equivalenze –12 aprile 2016, 2016, Metal, acid, terracotta 88x140x20 cm, © Archivio Penone, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Over the past 45 years, Giuseppe Penone’s work has probed industrialised society’s understanding of nature. Rather than seeing them as distinct or opposed, Penone insists that the spheres of culture and nature are inseparably intertwined. For his earliest works, Penone attached the steel cast of his hand to a young sapling for it slowly to be absorbed by the growing tree. He also traced the outline of his body with wire onto a tree and simulated one more year’s tree growth by applying a thin layer of wax.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Gallery

In his solo exhibition “Equivalenze” at Gagosian Gallery in Rome, Giuseppe Penone presents new sculptures. Fist-sized terracotta moldings bear the precise imprint of his forceful grip. The terracottas are appended to iron plates, which he has oxidized in areas of repeated strokes. The repetition of blots and arcs yields a lively abstraction that resembles the flickering shadows of a leafy plant or the staccato marks of a Fauvist landscape—the ambiguous zone between nature and art. For his new sculpture, “Equivalenze” (2016), Penone made plaster molds of tree parts and cast them in bronze, erecting an artificial tree, piece by piece. From the roots, an anthropomorphic helix of bark emerges, becoming a figure in contrapposto*, facing its botanical counterpart. Penone thinks of such convergences as gesti vegetali (plant-like gestures). In his hands, the human form is freed from the tree, and the tree, in turn, reveals the visceral qualities of the human body. Using sculptural media and techniques, he releases the animas of things, thus uniting the essence of nature with the sensations of direct human action. Trees have been a focal point for Giuseppe Penone throughout his career. Many of his earliest so-called “actions”, performances that survive only as photographs, took place in the forests near Turin or his home town of Garessio in Italy. To bring the outdoors into the gallery was an important strategy for many of the artists associated with the legendary group of Arte Povera. In 1969, Penone covered a young tree with a thin layer of wax to simulate an additional year’s growth. With the artist’s finger prints replacing the texture of the tree’s bark, “Gli anni dell’albero piú uno” (1969) is emblematic of Penone’s investigation of the relationship between our bodies and the eco systems we inhabit. The following year, Penone began work on his ongoing series of “Alberi” for which he stripped industrially cut beams back to reveal the shape of the younger tree within.

* Contrapposto is an Italian term that means counterpose. It is used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs. It can also be used to refer to multiple figures which are in counter-pose (or opposite pose) to one another.

Info: Gagosian Gallery, Via Francesco Crispi 16, Rome, Duration: 27/1-15/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-19:00, www.gagosian.com

Giuseppe Penone, Equivalenze (Equivalences), 2016, Film still from Ephemeris series  , © Archivio Penone, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Giuseppe Penone, Equivalenze (Equivalences), 2016, Film still from Ephemeris series , © Archivio Penone, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

 

 

Giuseppe Penone, Equivalenze (Equivalences), 2016, Film still from Ephemeris series  , © Archivio Penone, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Giuseppe Penone, Equivalenze (Equivalences), 2016, Film still from Ephemeris series , © Archivio Penone, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery