Penone : A Timeless Odyssey Through Nature

Giuseppe Penone: Ramificazioni del Pensiero/Branches of Thought

Gagosian Gallery
456 North Camden Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

September 5 - October 18, 2014

Giuseppe Penone was a force in the "poor art" movement of the 1960s and 70s. This movement responded to the artificiality of "pop" and the extreme plainness and harsh nature of minimalism. He strived to make art connect with the natural world, as we can see in this exhibition through his use of trees and marble. His career is defined by asking very simple questions:  What is time? What is sculpture? What's important about his questions is that they last throughout time and serve as precedents. His works are very simple, but reveal a lot of meaning about the fundamental aspects of life such as origin, age, mass, and form.

In one piece, titled Door Tree––Cedar, we see a tree with a six foot hole carved into it. Penone reveals the tree at a young age in this hole, perhaps at 15 years, depicting how it may have looked at this time. As a painter may create a portrait of a child and then one of that child as an adult, Penone has sculpted an organic depiction of life throughout time; amazingly, he has documented the dynamics of age in one piece.  Another piece shows marble cut away at by water. By portraying the effects that water has on solids, he presents the idea that things in nature have relationships with one another.  The form of marble responds to water beating against it; time as a force has an effect on the growth of trees. Analogously, humans mature with time and outside forces affect our appearance.

The Gagosian Gallery itself is extremely vast and open, with a lot of natural light peering through windows as well as soft lighting set up to illuminate the artwork.

It seems that with a tree as his muse, Penone is inspired by growth. Nature grows, evolves, and develops. So do we. As a collective human race, we travel through time and are connected by it.  Penone's work is universal: it binds together members of the human race.  But it doesn't stop there:  with its potential to affect the way viewers respond to the nature around them, this show may inspire them to find commonalities in all forms of life.