ArtView February 2016 | Page 24

A tree trunk of marble, of calcium, encloses, in our thought, the carbon, the plant, and the plant the camouflage of the color of the bronze, and the color of the bronze, the green of the foliage and the trees, the flowing of the material, of water, of rivers in which there courses the subterranean life of the world, of the veins whose flow is enclosed in our body as in the marble cave of the mountains. —Giuseppe Penone Engaging with, and subtly intervening in nature so as to reimagine it in artificial terms, Penone finds ever new ways to mark the persistence of biological life, harmonizing elemental occurrences in terms of his own artistic drive. In each work, he reveals the innate sculptural qualities of natural materials, chiseling marble and casting from nature to expose the deep patterns of growth and time. Portrait of Giuseppe Penone © Archivio Penone Giuseppe Penone was born in 1947 in Garessio, Italy. He lives and works in Paris and Turin. In an oeuvre spanning more than forty years, Penone has explored the subtle levels of interplay between man, nature, and art. His work represents a poetic expansion of Arte Povera’s radical break with conventional media, emphasizing the involuntary processes of respiration, growth, and aging that are common to both human being and tree. The tree and its relationship to man is among Penone’s most enduring subjects and a seemingly inexhaustible source of inspiration. Foglie di pietra/Leaves of stone (2013) is a work that gives its title to a major exhibition of Penone's art currently showing at the Gagosian Gallery Hong Kong. In a series of sculptures tall splints of delicate cast bronze tree branches cradle found fragments of eighteenth-century ornamental stonework inspired by vegetal forms, a meditation on the endurance of nature beyond the passage of manmade culture and history. Leaves of Stone/Foglie di Pietra 21 January – 12 March 2016 Gagosian Gallery Hong Kong [email protected] www.gagosian.com