Pelle di grafite – riflesso di ambra

Pelle di grafite – riflesso d’ombra features the enlargement of a part of the body – here, apparently, a mouth. We have the impression of looking at the skin of the face on an almost microscopic scale. Penone’s practice is pervaded by the question of skin, seen less as the limit of a body than as a porous surface between inside and out. This question of contact and imprints recurs very frequently in the artist’s work. The conjugation of the enlargement and the use of graphite transforms the mouth into a landscape: tiny wrinkles and folds are transformed into crevices, slopes and rivers, bringing the work within the artist’s cosmology – one in which human identity merges with non-human life. The work was completed manually with a graphite pencil. Both this technique and the effect of scale play on this ambiguity, as does the title, which indicates a double meaning: a reflection on shading, or the reflection of a shadow cast by the graphite pencil marks on the paper. 

The artwork was exhibited for the first time at Chapelle Saint-Martin-du-Méjan, Arles, in 2013 and then at the Musée de Grenoble in 2014–15.