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Description of  Seeing Through Closed Eyelids: Giuseppe Penone and the Nature of Sculpture (Toronto Italian Studies)

Can a work of art help us know our world differently? In this first scholarly study of Giuseppe Penone, art historian Elizabeth Mangini argues that the Italian artists engagement of the bodys multiple senses constitutes a new theory of sculpture as a means to connect with and know the phenomenal world. Through close readings of signal works across Penones five-decade career from his emergence in the context of 1960s Arte povera to his position as a pre-eminent contemporary artist today Mangini demonstrates how Penone refuses modernist opticality, recasts artistic labour, and emphasizes a non-anthropocentric concept of time. Penones approach challenges viewers to broaden their sensory and temporal perceptions, creating structurally significant new ways to understand human experience. Read more