Bark/Birch/Birkenau <i>(A Conversation with Giuseppe Penone, Georges Didi-Huberman and Gerhard Richter)</i>

Giuseppe Penone's 2007 chamber installation Sculture di linfa (“juice sculpture”) consists of a white marble floor in Carrara marble (fig.). The floor is elaborated as a bas-relief with the veins of the brain. On top of the floor are hollowed tree trunks with a fine recess, in which red resin flows. The walls of the room are completely covered with large leather sheets. Those who get closer see that the skins show the imprints of tree bark, which was left in the leather support through a complex tanning and wetting process. It is the inside of the molds that Penone exhibits, and not the mimetic outside of the bark-leather. The room Sculture di linfa is thus lined by the monumental negatives of the bark - between printmaking and sculpture - and thus exposes itself as the inner body of a forest.