Evan Penny: Ask Your Body

Supported by the Art Gallery of Alberta and the Curia Patriarcale di Venezia, the exhibition (organized in Venice for the 57th International Art Exhibition) will feature 6 new sculptures, made from pigmented silicone, hair and aluminium, and 2 photographs by Evan Penny. The sculptures are firmly rooted in the artist’s longstanding interest in the human body and how viewers perceive their relationship with themselves and others. While the artist has expanded his sculptural repertoire by openly referencing art from other eras, Evan Penny: Ask Your Body primarily emphasizes the visceral manner with which viewers experience the works. The sculptures, several of which are monumentally scaled, can be described as meditations on the many conditions of being human: aspiring to be god-like and failing ( Marsyas ); the body subjected to the sacrifices and indignities of life on earth ( Homage to Holbein ); having one’s body regarded as fragmented and dislocated ( Hanging Torso and Self Portrait after Géricault’s Fragments Anatomiques ); and creating empathy through the imagined history of the artist’s life, as represented by a fictional period from the past ( Young Self ) and from the future ( Old Self ).