Untitled 1974

This Untitled work by Giuseppe Penone presents a grid-like structure composed of four framed images, each nearly square. The composition is immediately striking for its use of negative space, the blank white backgrounds sharply contrasting with the grayscale depiction of human limbs that border each frame. This arrangement evokes a sense of fragmentation, almost as if viewing the human form through a fractured lens. Penone’s formalism invites a semiotic reading. The framing functions as a signifier, delineating boundaries that both include and exclude parts of the human figure. It is as though the body is being presented as a series of detached elements. Penone challenges traditional notions of wholeness and unity. The body, as a cohesive entity, is destabilized, forcing us to reconsider the relationship between part and whole. The strategic placement of limbs disrupts our expectations and destabilizes our conventional understanding of representation, suggesting that the meaning is not fixed but emerges from the interplay between the visible and the invisible, the present and the absent.