Memory of fluids
Giuseppe Penone sculptor
Giampaolo Penco
Italy, 2012, 60′
Languages: Italian, French
Subtitles: English
Languages: Italian, French
Subtitles: English
Giuseppe Penone, a leading exponent of the Arte Povera movement, is followed for more than a year, among his works and exhibitions in Europe.
Giuseppe Penone, a leading exponent of the Arte Povera movement, is followed for more than a year, among his works and exhibitions in Europe.
SYNOPSIS
The beginning of the film is the recovery phase of construction and installation of a large public works in bronze for the GAM in Turin. The work is inaugurated by President Giorgio Napolitano at the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy.
From here we start to talk about the work of the artist. From his works in recent years as ” Sculture di linfa” installation presented at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and is now the Maxxi in Rome, the “Albero delle vocali” in the garden of the Tuileries in Paris, a bronze tree, uprooted, which extends its branches on the soil surface, we’ll reach up the beginning, radical choices, opposition to the international culture of the time, that already flirted with the mode of consumption, the choice of working in the mountain village where he was born, Garessio, the charm of folk traditions that have their roots in the magic of this place and landscape.
In Garessio remained the family home, his childhood in the mountain landscapes, the family experience (his grandfather a sculptor, his father a farmer), the international attention that his artistic action reached since the beginning of the early ’60s.
In the middle is the core of his work: “any movement in space already contains all the characters of the sculpture. Breathing is sculpture as a fingerprint is a pictorial image. In my work I often make myself visible gesture that can normally be automatic, involuntary forms are related to the volume and the actions of our body. A gust of wind equals one breath. ”
There are those who live and work with him, his family, the craftsmen and workers, those that shape his thinking, those who know him from the beginning, Germano Celant, those with whom there is a relationship of respect and collaboration as Daniel Soutif.
There is the idea of identity, which is materialized in the impression, the contradiction of contemporary culture that encourages us to erase our identity, while art asks to affirm it.
And then there’s nature, which coincides with the man, and the man who “flows” in nature.
CREDITS
Director Giampaolo Penco
Production Videoest
With Giuseppe Penone, Germano Celant, Daniel Soutif, Laurant Busine, Giampaolo Penco