Giuseppe Penone: Impronte di corpi nell’aria / Bodies Imprinted in the Air, Athens, September 16–November 27, 2021

Installation Views

Installation video. — Installation video

Installation view. Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian — Installation view
Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian

Installation view with Giuseppe Penone, Corpo di pietra—rami (Body of Stones—Branches) (2016). Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian — Installation view with Giuseppe Penone, *Corpo di pietra—rami* (*Body of Stones—Branches*) (2016)
Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian

Installation view with Giuseppe Penone, Indistinti confini—Holona (Indistinct Boundaries—Holona) (2013). Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian — Installation view with Giuseppe Penone, *Indistinti confini—Holona* (*Indistinct Boundaries—Holona*) (2013)
Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian

Installation view with Giuseppe Penone, Impronte di corpi nell’aria—colonna (Bodies Imprinted in the Air—Column) (2016). Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian — Installation view with Giuseppe Penone, *Impronte di corpi nell’aria—colonna* (*Bodies Imprinted in the Air—Column*) (2016)
Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian

Thumbnail - Installation view. Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian

Thumbnail - Installation view with Giuseppe Penone, Corpo di pietra—rami (Body of Stones—Branches) (2016). Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian

Thumbnail - Installation view with Giuseppe Penone, Indistinti confini—Holona (Indistinct Boundaries—Holona) (2013). Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian

Thumbnail - Installation view with Giuseppe Penone, Impronte di corpi nell’aria—colonna (Bodies Imprinted in the Air—Column) (2016). Artwork © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Paris Tavitian

Works Exhibited

Giuseppe Penone, Impronte di corpi nell’aria (Bodies Imprinted in the Air), 2021. White Carrara marble and bronze, 39 ⅜ × 59 ⅛ × 5 ½ inches (100 × 150 × 14 cm) © 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris — Giuseppe Penone
*Impronte di corpi nell’aria* (*Bodies Imprinted in the Air*), 2021
White Carrara marble and bronze, 39 ⅜ × 59 ⅛ × 5 ½ inches (100 × 150 × 14 cm)
© 2021 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

About

When you work with any material, the material is leading. It is the artist’s mission to coax out the vitality and show it. I want to make you understand what creation is, the chain of thoughts and actions.
—Giuseppe Penone

Gagosian is pleased to present Impronte di corpi nell’aria / Bodies Imprinted in the Air, an exhibition of works by Giuseppe Penone made between the early 1970s and 2021.

In an oeuvre spanning more than fifty years, Penone has continually expanded the parameters of art through a close examination of the interplay between the human body and nature. Since the beginning of his career in the late 1960s, as a proponent of the Arte Povera movement, he has employed and juxtaposed materials both ancient and modern, “raw” and manufactured—including bronze, leather, wood, stone, and acacia thorns. The exhibition’s title comes from a series of new sculptures in bronze and marble that evoke the growth of plant life out of stone, as though from earth.

Penone’s early work is marked by an elemental simplicity. Investigating primary materials in his immediate surroundings, he often staged interventions in the forests around his Piedmont hometown. Arte Povera, distinguished by the use of “poor” and unconventional materials such as plant and vegetable matter, questioned cultural assumptions through the evocation of a preindustrial age. In critiquing the dehumanizing effects of mechanization, the movement countered other art genres, both earlier and contemporaneous, such as Surrealism, Pop, and Minimalism.

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