Last Saturday went to the last day of the Giuseppe Penone exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery (now at Golden Square). Penone As you enter there is a sickly sweet smell: is the receptionist enjoying a takeaway? It turns out that it's coming from tree resin in a carved recess in the centre of a wooden beam. 'Scultura di linfa' (2006).
'Arte povera' was a 1970s term which elided an interest in materials and a less exclusive practice of art - old clothes and mud were two materials in vogue. Penone's project is different: by paring down to simple materials and structures, he frees the metaphoric possibilities of the substances he uses. 'Lo spazio della scultura, corteccia' (2004) is a bronze cast of cedar bark, partly covered by leather hammered onto its surface, mimicking the tree: part of the leather is unchanged. We are in the world of myths, Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', where a god can become a tree or a man or woman can be changed into a tree or animal.
