Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Giuseppe Penone which will be on view from September 9th through October 11th 2008.
The exhibition will present several new works which investigate the limits between drawing and sculpture, surface and volume, between the human, the vegetable, and the mineral.
The North Gallery will feature a large wall installation of leather forms bisected with a bronze sculpture with vegetal resin, titled Scrigno (2008). A six-paneled serial work, Riflesso del bronzo (2005) documents the process of changing material, from the first perfectly handmade plate, a bronze mirror which is the result of actions of Penone’s hands and intensive contact with the surface of the work, to a fusion of cast mirror and found bronze panel, maintaining in each successive new cast the imperfections inherent in the previous one. Alongside this modular work, Spazio della scultura (2002) takes the form of a bronze table, a space destined as sculpture; and Proiezione (2003), the volume of the shadow of a slide projection made in terracotta and held in place by branches and twigs cast in bronze.
In the North Gallery Viewing Room, Pelle di grafite (2007) a suite of black graphite drawings will be on view alongside Tre pietre (2006), in bronze, steel and stone on the floor.
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. In his work a universe of suggestions ensues with images that spring from the touch or that touch provokes: the human skin becomes a landscape; the bark of a tree becomes animal skin; vegetable resin becomes relic; the mirrored surface becomes sculpture. Long associated with developments in sculpture in the 60s and 70s and with arte povera, Penone’s work retains its own distinctive character, incorporating binary meanings related to the natural world and the notion of living sculpture.
Penone’s work is currently on view in ‘Revolutions: Forms That Turn’ at the 16th Biennale of Sydney’, installed on the grounds of the Royal Botanical Gardens/The Domain and at the MCA, Sydney, through early September 2008.
Last summer, Penone was selected to represent Italy in the Italian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale for which he produced the installation Sculture di linfa, 2007. Installed over two rooms, one of large tree trunks covered with animal hide imprinted by bark; the other of tanned leather segments on walls, a carved, veined white marble ‘floor’ containing the imprint of a brain, and two halves of a tree poured with resin, it suggested a living organism. Penone says, “ ‘Sculture di linfa’ stressed the void, creating a special sensation of the space and process of the work, a ritual of sculpture and way it is made.”
He has just completed a commissioned sculpture project in the garden of La Reggia di Venaria Reale: the royal residence of the Savoy in Torino, Italy, consisting of fourteen permanently installed works on the grounds, for which a catalogue was recently published, Il giardino delle sculture fluide di Penone, curated by Ida Gianelli. Last winter, the Villa Medici, Academie de France Rome, presented a solo exhibition of indoor and outdoor works. This summer, an exhibition of new work has been on view at Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, through the end of July.
This Fall, Penone will have a one-man exhibition at the Museo d’Arte Moderna de Bologna, from September through December. In November a solo show of his work will coincide with the inaugural exhibition of the renovation of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and this Spring the Toyota Museum, Japan will open a show.
Upcoming group exhibitions include The Russian Linesman, curated by Mark Wallinger at the Hayward Gallery in January 2009; and Close Up , curated by Dawn Ades and Simon Baker at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Scotland from October through January ’09.
Giuseppe Penone was born in Garessio, Italy in 1947, and he works in Turin and Paris which he teaches at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Initially associated with Arte Povera and the group of artists who became known as the Turin School, his work relates also to the emergence of Land Art and Earth Works throughout the United States and Europe.
He is the recipient of the Schock Prize for the Visual Arts—reconciling nature and civilization—in 2001 from the Kungl Vetenskapsakademien, at The Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Stockholm. He has had solo exhibitions at The Drawing Center, New York (2003), and a retrospective exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2004). His drawings were exhibited last Fall in a group show, Drawing Connections: Baselitz, Kelly, Penone, Rockburne and the Old Masters, drawn from the collection of The Morgan Library, New York and curated by Isabelle Dervaux and the invited artists. In 2001 he realized a commission for the town of Rotterdam, a bronze tree ten metres high, titled Elevazione, and in 1999 he completed a public project and commission for the Jardin Tuileries in Paris, France under the auspices of the French Ministry of Culture.
Survey exhibitions devoted to the work of Arte Povera which have featured his work include Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, The Walker Art Center, Tate Modern, MOCA, and the Hirshhorn; as well as Arte Povera from the Castello di Rivoli Collection, held at the MCA Sydney, Australia. Solo exhibitions over the past decade include years have been seen at Spazio per l’arte Contemporanea, Bella Monaca, Rome; the Synagogue Stommeln, Pulheim-Stommeln, Germany; Rennes Espace in Paris; De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Totoya Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota Aichi, Japan; and the Carré d’Art, Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes. A retrospective survey of his work Giuseppe Penone: 1968-1998 was shown in 1999 at the CGAC, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and was accompanied by a catalogue.
