In front of the Chapelle du Méjan, in a tree that doesn’t look as if it’s in bronze (though it is), an engraved stone lintel is balanced on branches in an echo of the decorative lintels that can be seen on some of the surrounding facades. This work by Guisepe Penone, was specially created for Arles 2013. On the ground floor of the chapel, a sort of retrospective brings lesser known photographic work into dialogue with several sublime or explicit pieces. A tree cut into two and turned upside down occupies the centre of the nave. Then, we discover black and white photographs in which we see trees and the body of the artist meeting together, adjusting to one another, pushing up against one another and being transformed. An image from 1968, a premise for a piece that later shows a bronze hand gripping a trunk, is particularly moving and troubling and makes reference to a recent x-ray in which the hand once again occupies a preponderant position. There’s an imprint of the body in the mass of dried leaves that perfume the exhibition, a dialogue of potatoes with the photos of sculptures made by the artist in his youth and then, in the choir, and an extraordinary sequence of hands encircling light, with an imposing and subtle bronze hand appearing again in the foreground. The combination of such photographic approaches is a first: a nature series alongside the definitively explicit metaphor of a self-portrait with mirror contact lenses. Elsewhere we find a notebook, two hands in colour, a piece in black and white and an extraordinary black graphic on canvas with illusory relief and depth. The pure poetry of the exhibition, confronting us with the depths of creation, means you come out feeling more available, more open, happier, but also troubled by the evidence that beauty is above all to do with the coherence of the gaze that is turned upon the world. Other works are also presented at the Réattu Museum.
Guiseppe Penone
From Tuesday 2 July to Sunday 22 September 2013
Chapelle Saint-Martin du Méjan
13200 Arles
France
5 € for an entry to this exhibition only
8 € for an entry to this exhibition + to the exhibition ‘Dissonance’ by Lee Ufan at the Capitole
Tickets sold at the bookstore Actes Sud
