Giuseppe Penone

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

Gagosian Hong Kong is pleased to present Giuseppe Penone’s first gallery exhibition in Hong Kong, which includes key works from the last decade.

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.

In December 1968 Penone performed a series of formative acts, literally described, in a forest near his home in Garessio, Italy. In one, he interlaced the stems of three saplings in Ho intrecciato tre alberi (I have interwoven three trees); in another, Albero/filo di zinco/rame (Tree/Wire of Zinc/Copper), he made the imprint of his hand in nails on the trunk of a tree and then affixed twenty-two pieces of lead (his age at the time), joined up with zinc and copper wire. In Crescendo innalzerà la rete (Growing it will raise the net) he enclosed the top of a tree in a net weighed down with plants, while in L’albero ricorderà il contatto (The tree will remember the contact), he pressed his body to a tree, marking the points of contact with the trunk in barbed wire. In Continuerà a crescere tranne che in quel punto (It will continue to grow except at that point) he intervened in the growth processes of a tree by inserting a steel cast of his own hand; over time the tree retained the memory of his gesture. In a stream he immersed a slab of cement of the dimensions of his body with the imprints of his hands, feet, and face (La mia altezza, la lunghezza delle mie braccia, il mio spessore in un ruscello [My height, the length of my arms, my girth in a stream]).