Giuseppe Penone (°1947, Garessio, Italy) addresses the contact between man and nature. Until 26 September there is an exhibition of Penone's drawings and sculptures at De Pont in Tilburg, Netherlands. Its title ‘Nelle Mani - In the Hands' seems to refer to the basis of Penone's conceptual and poetic work, which starts from his tactile experience and attempts to understand and reflect on reality. The artist shows that man is nature and that, in comparison to other aspects of nature, we as humans have a relatively short existence. The following text is based on an interview with him about his work as part of the project ‘Personal Structures: Time Space Existence'.

With his work, Penone aims to utilize and show already existing forms in a new way. "My work is based on simple elements and it is above all a sculptural practice. My work is not a work on representation: it is a work related to materials." Conform the style of the Italian movement Arte Povera of which he was the youngest member, the artist uses natural materials, such as stone and wood. Persistence and duration are important qualities for him: these natural materials live in the present and last through time. Penone's sculptures evolved from the 1960s, a time in which many social, artistic and poetical values were questioned, as well as conceptions of reality that stemmed out of the 1800s and prior to that. "The debate surrounding values, and the craving to understand the new worldview after the war, lead to an absolute reduction of values and a desire to begin from the most elementary and basic forms."
For Penone this meant a focus on ‘touch' and ‘sight' in an elementary way. Even though he remarks that reality is based on many aspects, the tactile experience of the world is most important to the artist. Where a visual experience can deceive us, touching something means having a direct relation of the body with reality. This direct relation offers the possibility to be more precise in what surrounds you and, according to Penone, this makes it important for sculpture. "By touching the work you can understand the medium, you can define space and the volume of the object, but it is above all a way to verify its form." The artist adds that the same counts for materials: "When you see a shiny object, it could be a solid or a fluid; in order to verify the material you must touch it. This demonstrates that sight is deceptive, it is a convention. When you need to verify something, it is necessary to touch it, sight isn't enough. (...) With touching there is a greater adhesion to the truth in comparison with seeing."

TRACE

Penone's idea of touching as a way to verify the world around you is not the only aspect of touching that is present in his work. Also important is the idea of leaving a trace: touching a surface means leaving behind an image. These traces or images seem to show your existence. The artist says that he started from this idea of leaving behind a trace. "When you actually touch something, you leave an image - not a cultural image but an animal kind of image. This is an image that anyone can leave; it is only the elaboration of this image, which brings meaning to the image itself and thereby becomes a work of art."
When touching the surface of an object, Penone believes that your hand takes the form of the surface you touch. According the artist, the skin is "a boundary, a border or dividing point". This means that the skin reflects the relief of the surface. He also mentions that this initial image belongs to everyone, not only to the artist. It is an automatic image, like breathing. "When you breathe you release a different volume of air, which is itself a sculpture. The meaning of sculpture is exactly this: to introduce a form with space. Breathing therefore is creating sculpture automatically. I use breathing as an example to further underline the elementary aspect of this gesture. My work stems from these considerations, simple things and actions, such as the act of touching, opening the eyes and by defining the body itself as a sculpture."
The way we seem to deal with these traces or images is remarkable for the artist. "When you touch something, you leave traces that are continuously cancelled, removed, since these marks are considered dirty. We spend most of our existence cancelling our traces, yet we actually affirm our existence through and by these traces." Penone adds that the cancellation of and affirmation through our traces is a contradictory situation and requires reflection: "Art is the affirmation of its own existence through images."

POETRY

According to Penone, nature itself would be the perfect work of art. But he adds that art is language and therefore imperfect: it is a means to affirm one's identity. A good artwork touches your existence, he says. "When you produce a work that touches your existence it becomes conceptual and poetical. A work of art that touches one's existence is itself poetic and conceptual, because life is something extraordinary and moving - or it would not be life. Poetry shares this revealing and surprising characteristic; a poetical conception of reality is part of existence. The word ‘conceptual' can be used to mean the rationalization of the emotions, to rationalize our amazement towards existence itself. The work of art is complete when it conjugates, when it puts these two things into relation. If an artwork were only conceptual, it would fall into dogmatic fact; if it is only poetical and therefore not rational, it would be life, pure emotion. Since art is language, by its very nature it must relate the concept with the idea of poetry." To Penone it is important that each artwork has both components; it should be a combination of poetry and concept otherwise the work will lack linguistic strength.
The consequence of an incomplete work, Penone states, is that it will not last the test of time. "The artwork may actually function as a work of art, but only for a limited period of time. On the other hand, if the artwork is able to move people, although this emotional response is difficult to rationalize, this is actually the aspect that keeps the work alive through time." To last the test of time, an artwork must have a certain visual immediacy and simplicity. But after the attention is caught, there must be other levels of interpretation to keep thinking about it and which get amplified according to the cultural context and different levels of sensitivity of the public. Penone wants the work to become part of the viewer. And he adds: "The works on view must (...) to some degree be appropriated by those who view the work, but the work must also be surprising. If it doesn't surprise, it cannot communicate a message."

Karlyn DE JONGH
is an independent curator

www.depont.nl