Contemporary art returns to Borghese Gallery with Giuseppe Penone, master of Arte Povera

The Borghese Gallery is once again opening up to the contemporary with a tribute exhibition to Giuseppe Penone (Garessio, 1947): from March 14 to May 28, 2023, the museum venue will host Giuseppe Penone. Universal Gestures, curated by Francesco Stocchi, in an exhibition itinerary that will pass through the Hall of Mariano Rossi, the Hall of Apollo and Daphne, the Hall of the Emperors and the Hall of Aeneas and Anchises to expand into the Garden of the Bird House and exceptionally into the Garden of the Sundial. Thirty-six works created by the artist between the 1970s and early 2000s will be on public view, paying homage to theunchanged vitality of sculpture and one of the greatest masters of Arte Povera.

The exhibition starts from the search for something that is not present in the Gallery’s spaces, offering a new reading of that relationship between landscape and sculpture that the ancient statuary in the museum’s collection recounts according to classical canons. It is a path intended to be in perfect continuity with the research on the relationship between Art and Nature by Gallery director Francesca Cappelletti. The exhibition does not propose any comparison but presents works chosen as a “reflection” with respect to theenvironment, offering a “completion” of elements: in the rooms characterized by a riot of marbles, sculptures and decorations Penone adds an organic graft of leaves, leather, wood that connects and defines the two universes. In the Gardens, on the other hand, the integration looks to the world of metals, through bronze sculptures that dialogue with the rich surrounding vegetation, enriched by about forty new potted plants that support some of the works.

The exhibition itinerary includes nuclei of works that are lesser known or iconographically little associated with Penone’s work, such as Sguardo vegetale, and others exhibited for the first time in thematic groups, such as Soffio di foglie and Respirare l’ombra, inserted into the space as autonomous and original presences. In the absence of mythology in Penone’s works, narrative shifts its axis, and the relationship between natural time and historical past gives rise to a new uncertain present. Distancing himself from any possible formal or symbolic confrontation with the Gallery, Penone’s work observes matter by revealing the forms it conceals, with the intention of reactivating that natural osmotic exchange between the museum and the surrounding park, which has inspired so many of the works part of his collection. Penone’s research investigates the proximity between human and plant nature, a central element of his work, and aims to make people reflect on his language and relationship with Time and History. In this mirroring, the vital component of the materials used by the artist alternates with the historical time of those of classical statuary, going in search of the strictly necessary.

For info visit the Borghese Gallery website.

Image: Giuseppe Penone, Space of Light (2008; bronze and gold, 8 elements) © Penone Archive

Contemporary art returns to Borghese Gallery with Giuseppe Penone, master of Arte Povera

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