Evan Penny: Ask Your Body

New and recent sculptures by the esteemed international Canadian artist Evan Penny.

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).

Evan Penny was born in South Africa in 1953. He currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Evan Penny makes sculptures of the human body from silicone, pigment, hair and aluminum. His pieces range from the almost precisely lifelike, to the blurred or stretched.

Michael Short is an independent curator and writer living and working in Berlin. Since 1988, he has collaborated with many artists, such as Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Wolfgang Laib, Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, Evan Penny, Robert Ryman, Rudolf Stingel, Richard Tuttle, Steve Wolfe, among others, on the realization of their exhibitions at galleries, museums and private institutions throughout the U.S.A., Europe and Asia.

The latest sculptures from South African-born, Toronto-based artist Evan Penny (born 1953) are rooted in his longstanding interest in the human body and how viewers perceive their relationship with themselves and others. While Penny has expanded his sculptural repertoire by openly referencing art from other eras, Ask Your Body emphasizes the visceral manner in 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 godlike 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 G

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