Weaving throughout the baroque halls and winding botanical gardens of Rome’s 17th century Galleria Borghese, the exhibition Giuseppe Penone. Gesti Universali presents a jarringly imperfect world when set against the ornate backdrop of a fabled space — one that has provoked unique dialogues between classical and contemporary art for decades. Throughout his career, Penone has examined sculpture (alongside drawing and photography) as a medium elaborate in its philosophical sensibility yet void of artifice, with works that blur the boundaries of the manmade and natural worlds. Curated by independent Italian curator and director of Il Foglio Arte Francesco Stocchi, Gesti Universali catalogues lesser known works and familiar themes across Penone’s 55 year career.
A return to Rome for the Torinese sculptor, the exhibition follows the 2017 unveiling of Foglie di pietra, a gargantuan bronze tree cradling blocks of marble situated on the Piazza Goldoni and commissioned by Fendi. Celebrating the public work — a gift from Fendi to the city of Rome — the fashion house also presented Penone’s work in a show titled Matrice, at their HQ in the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in the same year.
Penone’s earliest works emerged during the Arte Povera movement in the late 1960s, yet he has continued to evolve through an exploration of not only the materials and life processes of nature but a continual reexamination of the documentation of the work itself. Through his photographic practice, Penone alters the perception of sculpture, layering his works with sentiment and forcing new perspectives of the work’s physicality in subtly provocative ways.