contemporary monkey

Penone: "Breath of Leaves"

It’s only a pile of dried, grey brown leaves, swept into a mound, placed in the middle of Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery.  They’re not particularly impressive looking leaves either; small and perfect shape, lacking in personality.  They’re from the box tree, offers the Ikon employee sitting near the sculpture.  He goes on to say that the artist wanted to use box leaves for their size and light weight, and allegedly, wherever the sculpture goes, so go the same leaves.  That day it occurred to me the gallery employees might be a worthwhile source of un-tapped knowledge of contemporary art.

The Ikon Gallery was showing an exhibition of sculptures by Giuseppe Penone in June.  Left on my own, which is what many galleries do to wanderers from the outside, I would not have been able to even make a guess why the artist did what he did.  At the pile of leaves, however, I made the decision that it was the gallery’s job to help me understand why last Autumn’s tree trimmings are called art.  Turning around, I glanced by a few of the other equally baffling sculptures, and returned downstairs to the manned front desk. The willing person there pointed me in the direction of the show’s programme, in addition to retrieving a more specific Penone exhibition guide.   He also provided me a brief one or two lines to think about while traveling through the show.  After sifting through the Hammurabi-like code of marketing copy for the gallery,  Penone’s point became more straight-forward.  In it’s most basic form, Penone’s discovered that the boundaries between people and nature are a fluid border, sometimes not obviously visible.  I returned to my first position: the dead pile of leaves, which was adjacent to two, similarly looking boulders.  (I learned later that one of the rocks is a man-made replica of a river boulder, which, itself was carved by nature over thousands of years.  The replica was made in a few months, but Penone’s point was, even if you could do it, why would you?  My question exactly.  I like Penone.)

I enlist my new-found friend, still perched on the chair near the heap of leaves, for more banter about leaves, rocks, branches, anything that seems to make sense at the moment.  To my surprise, the guy is happy to thrash out some meaning with me.  Together we sort through theories, insights, even wild guesses, for about five of the pieces that are within eyesight.  He seems to have been well-prepared for the artist (“he” doesn’t have a name tag by the way, so I have no idea what to call him).

Together, we reckon that the leaf mound is Penone’s canvas, and his body, the brush.  His is the form imprinted onto the pile of leaves, just as a kid would do after a father has raked a large pile from under an Autumn tree.  It looks more like good fun than serious art, but Penone adds to the shape by blowing sideways while he lies chest-down in the stack.  A half-conical valley is the only imprint left from his effort, and indeed the work is called, “Breath of Leaves”.  Nearby are photographs of Penone’s warm breath in an Italian winter forest.  Each breath develops its own shape, and the still photographs capture only one instant of each puff of warm wind.

Birmingham's Ikon Gallery

My guide and I went on for twenty minutes more, and during our discussion, I realized that he must have been waiting in a sort of limbo for a curious person like me who isn’t intimidated to ask questions.  Later he tells me that the learning centre upstairs is showing a video that Penone himself made where he explains why he does what he does.  Interviews by the artist aren’t common enough in my opinion, so after having left my guide to chat with another curious mind, I dashed up to the video room.

Penone describes using his breath as an invisible sculpture. By capturing his warm  exhalation in a chilly forest, he suggests that plant life is not much different: branches and roots instead of arms and legs, expiring oxygen through leaves rather than carbon dioxide via the mouth.

I was inside the Ikon gallery for nearly two hours – about four times the length that most shows can be consumed inside this smallish gallery.  Enabling all the resources of the Ikon, however, I was able to enjoy myself much more, and learn a great deal about the exhibit than I would had I only read the exhibition guide.  I don’t know why galleries or museum don’t encourage their people to come forward to discuss the current programmes.  If the folks are there only for security, the gallery should employ people to circulate while engaging the public.  The repeat business would certainly increase.