Barcelona
Giuseppe Penone
CaixaForum Barcelona
Av. Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 6-8
September 21, 2004–January 16, 2005
Centre Pompidou
Place Georges-Pompidou
April 21–August 23, 2004
Curated by Catherine Grenier
Well known in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, Giuseppe Penone has never been altogether accepted in the US: Perhaps his sense of nature is too classical for us, too aromatically Mediterranean. (In fact, the Pompidou might think about putting Ovid’s Metamorphoses on the Acoustiguide.) We prefer American contemporaries like Robert Smithson who deal with nature as a brute and impure force. Penone’s sculpture can sometimes appear kitschy, but this arte povera artist can also make exquisitely lyrical studies of humankind’s intricate embedment in the natural world. The eighty works in this retrospective, as well as the curator’s essay and the interview in the catalogue, supply the argument for the European sensibility.