The Brooklyn Rail

There are artists who go through phases and periods, swapping styles and mediums to pursue their ends, and there are artists like Giuseppe Penone (b. 1947), whose practice proves remarkably consistent through years and even decades. In the case of Penone, it all started in a small village during the immediate aftermath of WWII. As the artist likes to say, he didn’t possess what was then considered the “culture” required to become an artist—except perhaps for the example of his grandfather who was an amateur sculptor. So when the time came to produce his first works, rather than aping what was in vogue at the time in Turin, where he had moved for art school, Penone turned to the woods and creeks that he had learned to love so intimately as a boy growing up in his native Garessio.

Fast-forward fifty years, swap the snowy mountains of postwar Piedmont for the swanky Hyde Park environs of the Serpentine Galleries, and you will see that things haven’t changed all that much.

Penone’s first series “Alpi Marittime” was a series of outdoor actions performed in the winter of 1967–68. In these works, the artist enters into haptic contact with the trees in the backyard of his family’s house and manipulates them in different ways. This unassuming project—of which only wonderfully tantalizing photographic documentation survives—signals an early interest in what was to become the master point of reference for Penone’s work: trees. At the same time, it showcases two themes which, alongside reflection on the nature of sculpture itself, dominate his oeuvre. The first of these is an interest in nature as an intelligent design in the process of self-making, what Spinoza called natura naturans, and the second is a haptic, almost osmotic, approach to artmaking that tries to establish a more horizontal, open relationship with one’s environment.

These two themes are again in full display in Thoughts in the Roots, on view in London until early September. In what has by now become a common gesture, the exhibition greets the visitor with a complex of three monumental tree sculptures.

The first of these, Albero folgorato [Thunderstruck Tree] (2012) consists of a bronze replica of a hundred-year-old willow tree, its pulp lined with gold leaf which calls attention to the action of the lightning that split its truck in half. The other two—further in the background and almost blending in with the surroundings of Kensington Gardens—are both called Idee di pietra [Ideas of Stone] (2010–24) and consist of river stones of different shapes and sizes placed in the forks of tree branches that are meant to visualize the pathways of human thought and creativity.

Actually inspired by an earlier artwork Penone made in 1981 called Essere Fiume [To Be a River], which celebrated the river stone as a perfect form produced by the slow but ceaseless action of the river—they are a comprehensive encapsulation of the philosophy of immanence that underlies Penone’s practice as a whole. The natural and human realms are not two separate entities pitted against each other, but rather are part of a continuum full of secret rhymes and correspondences that the artist should patiently unearth.

Inside the gallery, the highlights are two works that occupy the main room. Consisting of twelve carved saplings, the first of these, Alberi libro [Book Trees] (2017), is the latest permutation of what is possibly Penone’s most famous and longest-running series, “Alberi” [Trees] (1969– ). Here finished beams are carved and chiseled away to expose the shape and structure of the tree beneath, a celebration of the existence of these creatures whose growth is itself a living record of time and weather. The real standout, however, is the sensory installation that takes up the surrounding four walls. Made of a terracotta cast of the artist’s face which seems to breathe life into a pair of gold-leaf branches (another of Penone’s leitmotifs) and modular metal grids filled with bay leaves which cover the walls from top to bottom, Respirare l’ombra [To Breath the Shadow] (2000) turns the room as a whole into a space for contemplation. The silence created by the leaves muffles any noise, and their pleasant, pervasive smell creates an ineffable atmosphere that feels suspended in time.

Penone is a notoriously coy, measured speaker when it comes to discussing his art. When asked about the possible religious or ecological implications of his practice, he deflects the question by reasserting the fact that he considers himself first and foremost a sculptor, whose works are concerned with teasing out the implicit expressive qualities of materials. And yet, his sculptures seem to be undergirded by the sort of unwavering, philosophical conviction that must inevitably run counter to the presuppositions of our degraded and dishonest times. As we rush headlong toward catastrophe, Penone’s work invites us to pause and celebrate the sheer beauty and complexity of all natural forms. A tree or a river stone is a miracle enough.