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Open: Wed-Sun 10.30am-1pm, 3-7pm

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Artist: Giuseppe Penone

The image is what we perceive by means of sight and, by extension, is a mental representation evoked by memory or imagination.

This is the premise behind Giuseppe Penone’s exhibition set up in three large rooms of the Tucci Russo gallery.
The first room contains the works that give the show its title, Images de pierres: five elements in marble which, placed next to each other, hark back to an anthropomorphic figure. These elements are the matrix of the lithographs which we find framed in the same room, works dating to 1993 when they were created and presented for the first time at the Centre Genevois de Gravure Contemporaine.

On the floor, the work Tre pietre (Three Stones) 15/08/2006 in which the stone, also here the matrix of form, houses the noble elements of sculpture which ensure duration of the work over the years: stone itself, steel and bronze.

In the middle room there is a graphite frottage of the (skin) surface of the wall. The frottage renders visible that which the eye alone, without the aid of touch, could not have seen, unlike the case of the other work in the same room Corpo di pietra – rami (Body of Stone – Branches), 2016. In the latter sculpture the artist reprises the veining of the marble by gouging the surface of the stone, and from the marble emerge branches in bronze that reach out into space. So in this room we have three levels of artist intervention: the frottage that allows us to perceive the surface, the gouging of the stone to highlight its veining, and the stone itself which becomes material of germination.

A leap in time takes us to Giuseppe Penone’s first show at the Galleria Sperone in 1969: the artist had underscored the materials that constituted the substance of the gallery itself, setting a row of bricks next to the wall, a block of concrete on the floor and, at the window, Bar of Air, a hollow glass bar which therefore contained the air that passed between interior and exterior. These are some basic concepts that with time and with the use of materials more proper to sculpture have been developed and evolved to bring us to the works of today.

In the last room we come to the works Mina (Mine), 1989, graphite on slate, in which the graphite becomes an element of light in the darkness of the material and the mines, and Corpo di pietra – rete (Body of Stone – Grid), 2016, in which the metal grid traces the surface of the marble: in its movements due to heat and cold the iron “breathes” within the stone which will cohabit with its dilations..
Lastly, in the same room, the work Ad occhi chiusi (With Eyes Closed), 2009. This is a triptych whose lateral elements, created by gluing acacia thorns to canvas, depict two closed eyelids. The thorns evoke the sensitivity of the skin, while the central marble panel becomes a mental image.



Giuseppe Penone was born in Garessio (Cuneo) in 1947. He lives and works in Turin.
Awarded the Praemium Imperiale for sculpture by the Japan Art Association in 2014, he has recently exhibited at prestigious Italian and foreign venues such as Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, Rome (2017), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2016), MART, Rovereto (2016), Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2016), Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2015), Musée de Grenoble (2014), Forte di Belvedere and Giardino di Boboli, Florence (2014), Beirut Art Center (2014), Madison Square Park, New York (2013), Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2013), Château de Versailles (2013) and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2012).