Giuseppe Penone. Hands - Earth - Light - Colors

The work of Arte Povera artist Giuseppe Penone is on view in the exhibition Giuseppe Penone. Hands - Earth - Light - Colors at Marian Goodman Gallery New York through June 29, 2024. Shaped by a conceptual movement in the 1960s and 1970s that sought to ground art in everyday materials, Penone has worked in a distinctive realm within the tradition of Arte Povera with a unique body of work that prioritizes process, time, phenomena, the body and nature as sculptural materials, offering a continuous reinterpretation of these forms and their meaning.

Shaped by a conceptual movement in the 1960s and 1970s that sought to ground art in everyday materials, Penone has worked in a distinctive realm within the tradition of Arte Povera with a unique body of work that prioritizes process, time, phenomena, the body and nature as sculptural materials, offering a continuous reinterpretation of these forms and their meaning.

On view will be a selection of key photographic works, sculptures, and recent works on canvas which span the years 1970-2023, highlighting a conceptual theme that has propelled his practice and continues to resonate today. Central to this is the notion of touch and its importance to the artist: “to touch, understand a form, an object is like covering it with prints. A trace formed by the images that I have on my hands,” wrote Penone in 1969. Beyond the conventions of sight, the imprint for Penone is touch transformed into a fossilized gesture that records and shapes our reality and our perceptions. An index of the individual it is simultaneously unique and “the most democratic image that can be conveyed -- an image that leads human beings back to matter, to nature.” Touch and breath, forms which belong to everyone, transmute the tactile into the visual, underlying Penone’s notion of living sculpture.

A point of departure in this exhibition is an early sculpture from 1979-82 titled Cocci (Shards), which traces the imprint of the artist’s cupped hands holding a fragmented vessel, preserved through poured plaster. These solidified forms delineate both the residual shards of a vessel and the shape of the artist cupping his hands around it, reminiscent of the primordial gesture of trying to keep hold of what is fluid.