VIDEO:Giuseppe Penone at Fort Mason

The Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Parks Conservancy have partnered with Gagosian Galery to present a year-long outdoor installation by Giuseppe Penone in Fort Mason, a historic site within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Penone’s sculptural investigation of the perpetual give-and-take between humans and nature offers a poetic analogy to the evolution of the park itself. For Penone, trees are more than a material or an image; they are “not objects but individuals, with their own life and a shape different from ours but with the same dignity”. By recognizing, altering, re-creating, and interacting with the natural forces and cycles of the environment, he blurs the distinction between our physical selves and the natural world. In each work, a bronze cast of a tree is combined with natural elements, evoking the vital forces and life cycle of the surrounding growth. In “La logica del vegetale” (2012) the tree lies on its side, its gnarled root system exposed. Five living saplings native to California (valley oak, coast live oak, bigleaf maple, and two California bay laurels) sprout at the tips of its sprawling branches. In “Idee di pietra” (2004), large river stones nestle in the high branches of a bronze sculpture cast from a tree, as if weighing down the natural reach of the tree towards the light. The tree stands tall and straight; its narrow silhouette supporting the stones high into the air suggests a force resisting the planetary burden of gravity.

Giuseppe Penone at Fort Mason, Fort Mason, San Francisco, 24/10/19-25/10/20; Presented by Gagosian in partnership with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and Golden Gate National Recreation Area through the Art in the Parks program, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris; video: Pushpin Films