Giuseppe Penone’s sculptures are strong, poetic and subtle. This book focuses on his work with trees, and was commissioned by the Whitechapel Gallery to celebrate and document his exhibition there in September 2012, Spazio di Luce. Our ambition for the design was strike a balance between minimal, conceptual, tactile and material qualities.
The design of the book highlights some of the ideas within Penone’s work and compliments the inherent characteristics of the content. The softcover format is bound with white, uncoated paper stock, which is intended to age, colour and show the marks of its handling over time. The etching on the cover has been reproduced at 1:1 scale, as if the artist’s thumbprint is pressing into it.
The main artwork Penone produced for this commission is a full-size, hollowed out larch, broken down into several sections, which made it very difficult to fit into the format of a book. The fold-out format of the cover allows for an extra-long black and white installation shot of the work to be hidden inside.
