In art, as in life, size matters and sometimes big is all it takes to be beautiful. It’s a point worth remembering when dealing with the work of Giuseppe Penone. A member of the arte povera (meaning ‘poor art’) movement in the 1960s and ’70s, the Italian artist has carved a niche for himself with work that seeks out connections between natural and manmade processes.
Nowadays, big is his main thing. ‘Sigillo’ (2008) fills the first room of Gagosian’s vast King’s Cross space with its imposingly huge, bright marble slabs. A veined marble cylinder lies across its middle, leaving a criss-crossing pattern of rivulets and indentations in the marble behind it. The idea is that the cylinder is a seal that has left its mark in the rock, but the impression is more of someone having rolled up the top layer of marble like a carpet, revealing a grooved, hidden patchwork beneath. It’s a massive, ostentatious piece of art but it’s also very beautiful.
The other monumental work here, ‘Scrigno’ (2007), is made of sheets of wall-mounted weathered leather. Attached is a bronze cast of a tree, split down the middle, lined with gold and filled with resin. The leather bears the marks of tree bark and fills the room with the stink of cured hide, while the tree plays with Penone’s favoured ideas of growth, possibility, meaning and history. You’re left wondering if what’s impressive about it is its size, but it’s the emotional content of what Penone has produced that gives his work real weight. It has conceptual substance and visual impact.
The smaller works on show, including a freestanding bronze cast of a section of tree, reinforce that point by managing to have impact without being immense. Big, of course, isn’t beautiful. Ideas and aesthetics are. Penone manages it all.
Eddy Frankel