ART CITIES:N.York-Giuseppe Penone
One of the most important living sculptors and a legendary figure associated with the revolutionary Arte Povera movement, Giuseppe Penone has combined radicality and classicism in a personal style that has been admired for half a century. Combining materials such as wood, wax, leather, marble, and bronze, his sculptures reveal a fascination with the transformative forces of nature and themes linked to ecology and environmental conservation.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Marian Goodman Gallery Archive
Giuseppe Penone combined multiple works from 1981 to the present to create the new installation “A question of identity” (2017, that is on presentation at in Marian Goodman Gallery’s Third Floor Project Space in New York. The installation was crystallized in the artist’s mind over three decades ago, but was realized just this past year. In the exhibition, the artist offers us a glimpse of arrested time and of eternity through works which ask us to contemplate the identity of an imprint, the identity of a river stone, the identity of a grain of sand molded by the wind. The centerpiece of the installation ”Essere vento” (2014) is a tree trunk of petrified wood with an impression of a hand carved on the top, which juxtaposes nature with the manmade while suggesting physically incalculable time. In the palm of the hand sit two grains of sand, one is from the desert that is repeated perfectly in its specific form in another larger sized grain of sand carved by lasers to replicate sand’s physical qualities, with the artist working closely with researchers in physics and geomechanics at the Institut Néel and Laboratoire 3SR in Grenoble to achieve this microscopic sculpture. The installation also includes “Essere Fiume” (1981), composed of two large stones, one found in a river while the other is its identically-carved doppelgänger. The works depict Penone’s search for expression of elemental identity, the unity between man and nature, and mankind’s place within the magnitude of the natural world. “To extract a stone sculpted by the river, to travel upstream and discover the exact point from which the stone came and extract another piece of rock from the mountain and duplicate exactly the stone taken from the river is to be the river; producing a stone of stone is perfect sculpture, it reenters nature and is cosmic heritage, a pure creation”, says Giuseppe Penone. In conjunction with these works,”Propagazione” (2006), is a drawing on a scroll containing the artist’s single fingerprint in ink radiating in successive rotations of dense concentric rings, hangs on an adjacent wall. The fingerprint is an impression signifying our cultural index of individuality, it evolves into a landscape of the body, with its expanse and its limits. Finally “Albero di 3,50 metri” (1985), a sculpture hand-carved from the trunk of a tree, bears the whittled twigs and intrinsic knots of its existence. Resting on its side on a large plinth it preserves its memory as a young sapling while also displaying the mark of time of growth in the forest.
*Doppelganger: Deprived from the German language, literally meaning One who nearly or completely resembles another- but with no biological relation.
Info: Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57 Street, New York, Duration: 14/11-22/12/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://www.mariangoodman.com/
