Every tree is a home.

A little while ago I wrote about a sculpture of a tree in the Tuileries garden: l’Arbre aux voyelles. What struck me there was how the sculpture with its long reaching branches created a space of its own, a refuge.

More recently another sculpture of a tree by the same artist- Giuseppe Penone- has been installed temporarily in front of the Bourse de commerce. Since 2017 this circular building hosts François Pinault’s incredible private art collection of more than 10000 art works.

The day that I came to see Penone’s tree was particularly windy. We were approaching a change in the weather- an early cold and snow front- and Nature was stripping the trees of their leaves, preparing for a majestic entrance of winter. Come sit with me next to a tree like no other.

I found refuge from the elements in a new Japanese café that offered a view of Penone’s sculpture through large glass windows. Probably because of the Japanese aesthetic surrounding me, my mind has wandered to the importance of the trees in Japanese culture. The sacred trees known as shinboku (or goshinboku)—trees that are revered as sacred dwelling places, shrines for kami — Shintō deities or spirits- form a connection with a spiritual word. The trees are revered such as they are with their old knotted and sometimes broken limbs. In another of Penone’s sculptures- a “Lightning tree” – the broken part of the tree- it’s scar – is made even more visible, its beauty underlined by application of golden leaf. An approach reminiscent of Japanese technique of Kintsugi.

Giuseppe Penone A Lightning tree

 As I sat behind a light wood counter and looked outside at the sculpture, the torrential rain pouring over the stones and the bronze- it seemed to me that this tree was in the centre of its own created space. Just as a shinboku, Penone’s tree, with the stones on its branches defying both logic and gravity, containes an entire microcosm and defines the space around it. The curves of the branches corresponded to the curve of the building facing la Bourse – a curve inside the curve. Just like inside of the building itself, the circular form of the older construction hosts a concrete cylinder created by the architect Tadao Ando.

This picture does no justice to the sculpture- I snapped it when the rain has let off for a little while.

A door in the bark,

Stones made feathers.

Tree- now a home.

Giuseppe Penone was born in 1947 in Garessio, a village near Cuneo (Piedmont, Italy), lives and works in Turin and regularly stays in Paris. Even in his very earliest pieces, the artist experimented with a number of different materials (lead, iron, wax, pitch, wood, plaster and jute) bringing their individual physical qualities to the fore. In 1969 he created his first Alberi (Trees), each obtained by stripping a wooden beam and following one growth ring in order partially to uncover the trunk and branches, as they would have appeared before the tree was felled. Over the years, Penone has created a considerable number of variations on his Trees theme. The artist sees them as borders, thus implying, and focusing on mutual contact.

(From Biography | Giuseppe Penone )

I admit to only having discovered Penone’s work very recently. I find it fascinating. There is a collaboration between the natural world and the artist. As if the artist has looked and touched and felt and then something just flowed through him, through his hands and respectfully shaped the wood or the bronze. I wonder what is it that makes me find Penone’s tree sculptures so breathtaking? Maybe it is because it feels like he has managed to be so still and so attentive that he has showed the essence, the most important parts of the tree.

Giuseppe Penone The Door

The exhibition itself hosts “The door” – a sculpture carved inside a cedar tree. The bisected trunk of the tree, it has been meticulously carved to follow one of its growth rings. What one sees is a tree that was hidden- the structure of the tree itself is revealed. It was a heart-stopping moment for me- to see what is inside, the amber coloured heartwood.

It was interesting to see at the exhibition how visitors were drawn to Penone’s “Door”. The sculpture was exposed on the floor of the main circular area, without the pedestal, and surrounded by quite a few other installations. Yet, quite inexorably, the public found its way to it, trying to get close, to understand. So much so that a special guard was designated to stand near the sculpted cedar- and the former was clearly quite nervous with people coming so close.  The sculpture gave out a force field of attraction, yet as meticulous as the artist’s work was- it wasn’t an intricate piece of man made machinery. Penone has revealed what was inside of the tree already and it was enough to keep us mesmerised.

More trees in my sketchbook

Suddenly I saw the connections trees make in the surrounding space: how, in fact, they create their own, defining the parts that are filled in and those that are void. I’ve been aware of the beauty of the designs that the tree branches make in the sky for a long time. Their trunks also create a rhythm be it on the background of the sky or of the forest growth. I enjoy the exercise of drawing the tree trunks and trying to capture their relationship to the space around them and to each other. What I’ve realized with Penone’s work is that there are even more connections- the invisible ones: the complicated structure of the roots in the soil and the original branches covered by the bark. The trees create and organise the space around us and I think that this is why, when planted respectfully and consciously, they make sacred spaces. Be it a forest or a park in the city- or even just one tree.