Giuseppe Penone at Palais d’Iéna, Paris
For this year’s FIAC contemporary art fair, the Palais d’Iéna in Paris is presenting a monumental work by Giuseppe Penone: a cross section of a hollowed-out tree, revealing, in the manner of a mold or casting, how it looked at a younger age. This original idea for a sculpture brings the viewer into a physical, interior space. We interview the artist in the Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris.
L’OFFICIEL ART: You are exhibiting three works in the Palais d’Iéna: the 45m-long Sap Matrix and two new pieces. How did you choose these works to show?
GIUSEPPE PENONE: The tree rings show that the excavated tree would be eighty years old, the same age as the Palais d’Iéna. This space, conceived of by Auguste Perret, perfectly matches the work, which needs fifty-odd meters to be shown. It has already been shown in Paris and in Belgium, then taken down and stored. I was curious to see it again, because its size makes it difficult to install. Inside the tree, the inner surface is filled with resin and terra-cotta, the latter acting to prevent any leakage of the resin. The work has several elements; it’s rather complex. The two related works are indeed new, but they are very simple. The root idea is that when we think, a certain logic takes hold, and this thinking logic, which is also that behind expression, can be translated into geometric forms, which, like crystals, become something very logical – entities that we associate with our existence, our body, our being. These crystal forms are present in nature, in rocks. I could say that this idea of our logic, of the geometry of our thinking, is inherent in matter. So I thought of a bronze branch that supports leaves placed on the plaster molding of a face and then welded together. The brain is symbolized by a rock.
Do you think of mineral life, which is so deeply rooted in nature, and the notion of equilibrium as being in tandem?
Without explicitly aiming for it, I have tried to create a very linear, simple work: a branch in bronze to create a certain distance, like that of a projection. The branch propels the idea of development and the associations present in the work. But the initial motivation is thinking about the logic and intelligence already present in matter. I’m a sculptor, I always work with matter, materials: a good piece of art is a work imbued with vitality from which flows its energy, and that is full of concepts, a worldview. Matter has a life, and the paradox comes from the fact that science constantly expands the idea of life from the human to animals, and to the vegetal and the mineral: we’re trying to understand, to see the cosmos as a living organism. These ideas go beyond the stigmatization of inanimate matter. All of this is my passion. I create a dialogic work, one with a very simple form, maybe, but one that produces questions.
Sap Matrix is in the long, hypostyle hall of the Palais d’Iéna, a space that can prove to be complicated for presenting sculpture, but that allows the visitor to walk around your piece.
This room has a simplicity in its elements, and it has something that you hardly see nowadays in architecture: a rigorous and very interesting symmetry in the windows, the columns, and the three church-like naves – the central one and two running parallel, all with the same dimensions. This creates an extraordinary space. When they asked me to use this hall, I immediately thought of this piece. I imagined that it would find a good home in the space, and that a rhythm would be created with the columns that would echo the tree’s interior rhythm. Many elements are thrust into relation, while the space is in some way disturbed by this slightly illogical intrusion of the natural element at its center, and that introduces disorder into this highly regular space.
How do you place this work in your practice? It’s such a strong and captivating piece, which asks the viewer to develop a close relationship to it.
The sources of intuition connected to my work are always similar. In this case, they are associated with trees. I find my inspiration inside the wood: once I’ve discovered the tree rings, I excavate a tree at a particular age. These sculptures build on the idea of positive and negative, of casting and of modeling. For example, in traditional sculpture, when the artist gives a form to clay with his hands, these gestures are the casting of the work – they give form to the work, they describe it. The growth of a tree, ring after ring, becomes the casting of the tree contained within. The idea is to present the casting of the tree at a certain age, as though it were liberated from its carapace, making it present in space. This also suggests an absence.
Absence is brought out as well by the visitor’s feelings, which give a presence to the real tree...
Just as the visitor becomes absence when leaving the hall. Absence unlocks the imagination, not like presence, which sometimes stands in the way; when we don’t see something, our thinking is stimulated. Other pieces could be said to have an indirect connection to this exhibition – for example, a series of works from 1978 on the breath as the negative of the human body, respiration as a sculptural volume. The idea is that the volume of the breath diffuses into space a quality of air that doesn’t have the same character as the air around it. This volume – produced by all living beings, a characteristic of us that stays with us throughout our entire lives – is already a sculptural form. This thinking led me to conceive of a work where the positive of the breath can be seen. This piece is all in clay, because we also breathe in the earth, and its form is like a big vase in which you can partially see the human body. There, too, absence – that of the human body – meets a presence – that of the vase that becomes something like an inflated belly. There is the idea of life and of absence in this work on the breath. It could be said to have a formal connection to the branches and to the absence of the tree’s form.
Giuseppe Penone’s Matrice di Linfa (Sap Matrix) is at the Palais d’Iéna, home of the Conseil économique, social, et environnemental, in association with the Marian Goodman Gallery, on October 15–27, 2019.