Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots – Serpentine Galleries, London

Curators: Claude Adjil, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Alexa Chow

Thoughts in the Roots by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Penone is an enchanting exhibition at Serpentine South. Penone as a young artist became a leading figure in the Arte Povera movement, a group of artists who rejected traditional artistic language in favour of what art critic Germano Celant called the ‘magical and wonder-arousing value of the natural elements’. Decades later, his work continues to celebrate the relationship between humans and the natural world in highly imaginative ways. The gallery itself is ideally suited to the show: spring sunshine pours in through the windows beyond which trees are just coming into leaf.

Inside, the assembled pieces are quiet, almost meditative, mostly created in muted natural colours. Cotton canvas is used for great swathes of leaf frottage, rubbed surfaces, in the soft greens and browns of vegetable colour, with different iterations of Verde del bosco (Forest Green) from 1986, 2017 and 2018. There is little on display about Penone’s methodology, but photographs exist of the artist at work which suggest something of the scale on which he often works, and his close, literal embrace of trees.

A occhi Chiusi (With Eyes Closed), 2009, is an altogether more disturbing work on canvas and white Carrara marble, on which thousands of acacia thorns stand guard. Pressione (Pressure), 1977 uses charcoal on wall to create a strangely velvety texture – one you’d like to touch.

The most striking room is a square space – ‘like a chapel,’ Perone remarks at the opening – almost entirely lined with uniform metal grids containing bay leaves and bronze. This is Respirare l’ombra (To Breathe the Shadow), 2000. Penone visualises breath as sculpture, and envisaged the work as an immersive experience, celebrating respiration which dissipates over time as the leaves lose their scent and colour. It’s not easy to maintain the full sensory nature of the work, however, as both scent and colour have long since faded.

Opposite these walls, however, is a truly spectacular work in progress, Alberi libro (Book Trees), 2017. Great trunks of white fir, cedar and larch stand side by side, like spines of books, each painstakingly split open to reveal the slender plant living within each. The colours are the varied colours of the different woods, all invitingly warm. Alberi libro speaks of the enduring power of an epiphany Penone had in 1969 when he sensed the living presence of a growing tree within a wooden beam.

In another room, human bronze figures emerge from terracotta pots in Gesti vegetali (Vegetal Gestures), their slight outlines suggesting energetic movement as they burst from bushes and shrubs.

But the most spectacular works from Thoughts in the Roots are outside, foremost of which is Albero folgorato (Thunderstruck Tree), based on an ancient willow in Belgium which was struck by lightning, its trunk splitting at the centre. Penone’s life-size bronze is a glorious thing, the ‘wounds,’ as he describes them, of the inner tree covered with gold leaf, as if its very soul has been revealed. Two further trees make up Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone), 2010-2014, in which large river stones appear to be embedded high up in their bare branches. It’s already apparent that the public have taken these outdoor sculptures to their hearts, photographing them and even picnicking beneath them. It’s a lovely embodiment of Perone’s stated desire to create not just ‘a garden inside’ but ‘a garden outside’.

Runs until 7 September 2025