Giuseppe Penone - Artist's book Géométrie dans les mains

Considered since 1968 as one of the leaders of Arte Povera, Giuseppe Penone has since pursued an artistic practice in which artifice and nature are closely intermingled.

He made himself known not only for bronzes with anthropomorphic forms, but also for pieces in which he intervenes directly on the natural world. This is notably so with the Arbres series in which, hollowing out wooden beams, he rediscovers the memory of the original tree with its branches and knots. These last years, human presence has made itself more present in his sculptures, notably through fragments of faces such as the mouth, nose or ears.

It is in this fertile dialogue between a primordial world and the human being that one must understand the present work produced by Bernard Chauveau Éditeur and Le Néant éditeur: twelve photographs, twelve moments in which two hands hold, handle, clasp and hide an enigmatic object. These images, printed in the negative, form an intriguing sequence which question us about our relationship to things, on the manner in which everyday gestures can take on a metaphorical dimension if one pays attention to it.

Accompanying this series of photographs the artist encloses an original text he wrote in 2008.

For the special edition (25 copies), the series of twelve photographs is an off-print using pigment-inkjet printing on 308 g Hahnemülhe paper, (15 x 20 cm size). All the photographs are numbered and the whole is signed.