Idee di pietra - 1532 kg di luce

Idee di pietra – 1532 Kg di luce combines a tree cast in bronze with river rocks placed at the intersections of its branches. The piece embodies a thought process: branches meander like many ideas emerging from a base of experiences and memories. The rocks are like points of entry or blockage in this flow of consciousness, marking the place in the tree where a new branch emerges, nourished by the light. Just as the rocks are sculpted by water passing over them, ideas form in the torrent of our thoughts. The bronze melted and shaped by humans is as malleable as a shrub at the beginning of its life. Giuseppe Penone makes the resemblance between human thought and non-human growth visible: for the artist, even trees and stones think.This concept took shape in twenty-four pieces of the series Idee di pietra, created by Penone with one or more stones starting from 2002-3. 

The first piece of the series is permanently installed in the Giardino delle sculture fluide (Garden of Fluid Sculptures) by Giuseppe Penone in the gardens of the Venaria Reale Palace in Turin, while the second was exhibited at the Karlsaue Park in Kassel in 2012 on the occasion of dOCUMENTA (13), curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.