Giuseppe Penone - Bodies Imprinted in the Air
at the Gagosian Gallery, Athens.
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. 'When you work with any material, the material is leading. It is the artist's mission to coax out the vitality'. Giuseppe Penone.
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 dehumanising effects of mechanisation, the movement countered other art genres such as Surrealism, Pop and Minimalism.
Penone's 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.
The exhibition's title comes from a series of new sculptures in marble that evoke the growth of plant life out of stone, as though from earth.
I had to include a photograph of the stairs as we went up to see the rest of the exhibition - I love this building
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