ART CITIES:N.York-Giuseppe Penone

Long related to developments in sculpture in the 60s and 70s, and to Arte Povera, Giuseppe Penone’s work retains its own distinctive character incorporating binary meanings related to the natural world and the notion of living sculpture. Penone’s interest in the space between the hand and the touched surface that becomes sculpture and drawing, between imprint and sight, gesture and action, has been sustained throughout his body of work.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Marian Goodman Gallery Archive

Giuseppe Penone’s solo exhibition features a series of canvas works titled “Leaves of Grass” (2013) which are being shown for the first time, alongside individual sculptures made concurrently (2014-15), and a series of drawings (2014). The canvas works in the series “Leaves of Grass” take as a point of departure Walt Whitman’s first edition of “Leaves of Grass” (1855), the series is comprised of twelve canvases in total which correspond to the twelve original poems of Whitman’s first edition.  Six of the works are presented here and a selection will be included in a forthcoming exhibition at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), Paris in the Fall of 2021. Initially inspired by images from the natural world, Penone found himself drawn to the verdant cover of Whitman’s first edition, which was printed, bound and set in type by the young poet in 1855 and has been in contact with Whitman’s hands.  Penone finds meaning in the correlation of a leaf to a fingerprint; a fingerprint to the surface of a book; and the hue of the book to nature, perceiving green as an equilibrium between light and shadow.  Scaling each canvas to a ratio echoing the first edition, he enlarges the work seven times in relation to its original object. Each of the canvases in the series is initiated by touch, the principle of cognition and creation, which the artist conceives as a “sign, order, thaumaturgic gesture, or projection of a thought”.  Beginning with an imprint of the finger, he adds another, with every ensuing impression becoming a unique and distinctive mark unlike the previous, akin to Whitman’s blade of grass as a uniform hieroglyphic.  Multiplying into an infinitude of 70,000 accumulated imprints, the canvas’ active surfaces metamorphose into vast landscapes resembling the foliage of trees.  Punctuating each vista is a small terracotta sculpture formed from the gesture of clasping a handful of earth, from clay sourced from lands across the United States. Drawing not only on Whitman’s ‘hopeful green stuff woven’ but earth itself as memory, these fired clay elements reinforce the Penone’s sculptural intent and his principle that one needs to touch the earth to activate it. The drawing “Leaves of Grass in the Hands” (2014) is made from graphite rubbing on paper mounted on silk and made from a first edition of Whitman’s book. A series of drawings titled “Foglie” (2014) reiterate the notion of landscape as an expanse of imprints.  Each work on paper traces indexical gestures, imprints in ink and pigment which carry the memory of an action, in dialogue with collaged leaves and vegetal forms. The bronze sculpture “Artemide” (2015) bears a twofold identity, being the cast of a real tree and evoking at the same time the female body as the title suggests, implying nature and fertility, interior and exterior, positive and negative forms. Nearby are the “Indistinti Confini – Contatto” (2015)  trees of carved marble which hide’ a bronze core, they explore boundaries between positive and negative as well as the sculptural process itself, the bronze invoking the memory of a wax mold. “Avvolgere la terra—corteccia” (2014), is an enlarged version of the terracotta forms shaped from the grasp of the hand,  an antecedent to the clay elements in Leaves of Grass. More monumental in form and released from its pedestal, the terracotta sculpture rests on a horizontal bronze plane that is a direct cast of the surface of bark. Last “Terre” (2015), comprised of nine iron panels, appears as an earthen landscape of terracotta fragments formed from the imprints of gestures.

Info: Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57th Street, New York, Duration: 9/3-17/4/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00 by appointment only (book here), www.mariangoodman.com