Installation view
Artwork © Giuseppe Penone. Photo: Annik Wetter
Installation view
Artwork © Giuseppe Penone. Photo: Annik Wetter
Installation view
Artwork © Giuseppe Penone. Photo: Annik Wetter
Installation view
Artwork © Giuseppe Penone. Photo: Annik Wetter
Giuseppe Penone
Pelle del monte, 2012 (detail)
Carrara marble, 67 × 63 × 2 ¼ inches (170.2 × 160 × 5.7 cm)
© Giuseppe Penone. Photo: Douglas M. Parker Studio
Giuseppe Penone
Pelle del monte, 2012 (detail)
Carrara marble, 67 × 63 × 2 ¼ inches (170.2 × 160 × 5.7 cm)
© Giuseppe Penone. Photo: Douglas M. Parker Studio
Giuseppe Penone
Propagazione, 1995
Ink on paper, 18 ⅞ × 13 inches (48 × 33 cm)
© Giuseppe Penone
Giuseppe Penone
Indistinti confini—Aesontium (Indistinct Boundaries—Aesontium), 2013
Carrara marble, bronze, and iron, 72 ¼ × 13 ¼ × 21 ⅞ inches (183.5 × 33.5 × 55.5 cm)
© Giuseppe Penone
On the occasion of the installation Idee di Pietra in Gstaad, Switzerland, Gagosian is pleased to present selected works by Giuseppe Penone in the Geneva gallery.
The works on view reveal Penone’s ongoing dialogue with the surfaces and patterns of nature—from trees, vines, and thorns to mountains, gold, and flesh. While the Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone) drawings depict small rocks balanced atop twisting fingers and tree branches, addressing concepts of gravity, weight, and scale, the Propagazione (Propagation) drawings—inspired by the concentric rings of crosscut trees—become metaphors for memory and identity. In the Indistinti confini (Indistinct Boundaries) sculptures, Penone renders tree parts in bronze and marble, uniting additive and subtractive formal processes within harmonious, organic forms.
For Pelle del monte (Mountain Skin), quarried blocks of Carrara marble retain a fine surface crust of incidental dirt, insects, and organic matter. Each of these works is, literally, a slice or cross-section of the outer skin of the mountain, which Penone then carves out to reveal the “vascular system” of the stone, underscoring the classical analogy between stone and flesh. And in Spine d’acacia – Contatto 16 maggio 2008 (Acacia thorns—Contact, May 16, 2008), thousands of sharp thorns, painstakingly attached onto paneled canvas, form subtle zones and vectors of energy. Both vicious and appealing, each thorn represents a nerve ending, evoking the sensitivity of skin when exposed to various environmental factors.
The Fall 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jordan Wolfson’s House with Face (2017) on its cover.
Le Couvent Sainte-Marie de La Tourette, in Éveux, France, is both an active Dominican priory and the last building designed by Le Corbusier. As a result, the priory, completed in 1961, is a center both religious and architectural, a site of spiritual significance and a magnetic draw for artists, writers, architects, and others. This fall, at the invitation of Frère Marc Chauveau, Giuseppe Penone will be exhibiting a selection of existing sculptures at La Tourette alongside new work directly inspired by the context and materials of the building. Here, Penone and Frère Chauveau discuss the power and peculiarities of the space, as well as the artwork that will be exhibited there.
As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.
Elizabeth Mangini writes on Giuseppe Penone’s installation of two sculptures at San Francisco’s Fort Mason.
The Spring 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #412 (2003) on its cover.
An outdoor installation by Giuseppe Penone in San Francisco’s historic Fort Mason features two life-size bronze sculptures cast from fallen trees. The project continues the artist’s long investigation of the perpetual give-and-take between humans and nature. In this video, Penone discusses what drew him to this landscape and the concepts behind the installation.
Gagosian director Pepi Marchetti Franchi speaks about Giuseppe Penone’s recent exhibition in San Francisco, detailing the various works and their relationships to the artist’s long-standing sculptural practice.
One year after the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Jean Nouvel and Giuseppe Penone sat down with Alain Fleischer, Pepi Marchetti Franchi, and Hala Wardé to reflect on how the museum and Penone’s commissioned artworks for the space came to be.
Jenny Saville reveals the process behind her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt’s masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles.
Giuseppe Penone discusses his new monograph, The Inner Life of Forms, with the book’s editor Carlos Basualdo, senior curator of contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at the Greene Space, New York. Hosted by art critic Deborah Solomon.
The Winter 2018 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available. Our cover this issue comes from High Times, a new body of work by Richard Prince.
In the small skiing village of Gstaad, among the towering mountains of the Swiss Alps, lies a surprising and ambitious exhibition of sculpture by Giuseppe Penone. Susan Ellicott tells the story of how this installation came to be.
The Spring 2018 Gagosian Quarterly with a cover by Ed Ruscha is now available for order.
Giuseppe Penone speaks with Carlos Basualdo and Pepi Marchetti Franchi about his monograph.
In Giuseppe Penone: ephemeris we get a glimpse of his process as he explores some of the ideas behind Equivalenze.
