Penone : Circling

11 Apr-31 May 2014

Overview

Part of the avant-garde Arte Povera movement that aimed to upset traditional ideas about how art should be produced and displayed, Giuseppe Penone draws his inspiration from the natural environment, particularly trees. He created some of his earliest works of the late-1960s in the forests near Garesio, Italy, stunting the growth of trees with nails, metal wire and an iron cast of his hand that gripped a living tree trunk. For one of the works exhibited at Gagosian, Scrigno / Casket (2007), Penone hammered patches of leather against a tree to impress the bark’s pattern and texture on the leather. Across the centre of this vast patchwork of overlapping leather lies a small tree, cast in bronze and split open to reveal a gold-plated interior. Also included in the exhibition is the marble work Sigillo / Seal (2008), which was part of Penone’s installation at Château Versailles in 2013. Evoking an unfurling rolled carpet, Sigillo / Seal will dominate the floor of the gallery space at almost twenty-metres in length.