Extended through November 30, 2019
Installation view
Artwork © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Johnna Arnold
Installation view
Artwork © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Johnna Arnold
Installation view
Artwork © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Johnna Arnold
Installation view
Artwork © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Johnna Arnold
Installation view
Artwork © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Johnna Arnold
Giuseppe Penone
Pensieri di foglie (Thoughts of Leaves), 2017
Bronze and river stone, 71 ⅝ × 77 ¾ × 37 ¼ inches (182 × 197.5 × 94.5 cm)
© 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Giuseppe Penone
Pensieri di foglie (Thoughts of Leaves), 2017 (detail)
Bronze and river stone, 71 ⅝ × 77 ¾ × 37 ¼ inches (182 × 197.5 × 94.5 cm)
© 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Giuseppe Penone
Geometria del pensiero (Geometry of Thought), 2016
Coffee and pencil on paper, 18 ⅞ × 13 inches (48 × 33 cm)
© 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
The bifurcations of the trees that appear so intimately human to us . . . The bifurcations of the fingers, by their movement through space, form the branches, the roots, and by the succession of actions in the same points, construct the branches and trunk of the plant. The woodland landscape is the action of sculpture.
—Giuseppe Penone
Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of sculptures and drawings by Giuseppe Penone, his first in San Francisco.
Penone uses objects from the natural world to document the intertwined relationship between humans and nature in evolution over a macroscopic, geological timeline. He was a proponent of the radical Arte Povera movement, beginning in Italy in the 1960s, which used “poor” and unconventional materials such as soil or plant matter to evoke a preindustrial age and subtly critique systems of industrialization, mechanization, and art. Penone’s earliest works included site-specific sculptures situated in the woods around his Piedmont hometown—the start of a decades-long fascination with the arboreal that is still prevalent in his work today.
This exhibition will feature a selection of works in bronze, stone, and marble illustrating Penone’s ability to seamlessly transpose human-made and naturally occurring patterns. In Respirare l’ombra – foglie di tè (To Breathe the Shadow – Leaves of Tea) (2008), a branch-like pair of bronze lungs emerges from a metal-gridded wall of tea leaves, creating a direct link between plant respiration and the inhalation and exhalation of human breath. Freestanding sculptures such as the cast bronze foliage of Pensieri di foglie (Thoughts of Leaves) (2014–17) compare traces made by the artist’s hand to the weathering and degenerative marks made on plants and minerals as they are left to the elements.
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.
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.
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.
