DALLAS, Texas (September 25, 2015) – Nasher Sculpture Center announces a presentation of work by Dallas-based artist Stephen Lapthisophon called Toccare (Non) Toccare, a project which will act in conversation with the current exhibition Giuseppe Penone: Being the River, Repeating the Forest. Taking place in and around the Nasher Sculpture Center via four installments beginning in October 2015 and lasting through January 2016, Toccare (Non) Toccare will include sculpture, found objects, drawing, poetry, sound, photography and video. These various elements will interweave in Lapthisophon’s actions, events and installations, extending and paying tribute to many of the central ideas in Penone’s work: body, nature, duration and the importance of place. With each monthly installment, Lapthisophon will examine the influence of Penone and the Arte Povera movement, as well as the idea of influence itself by addressing notions of impression, touch, ephemerality and legacy.
Mirroring Penone’s early action works in the Maritime Alps in the late 1960s, which are only known through photographic documentation, Lapthisophon’s Toccare (Non) Toccare works will likewise not be exhibited publicly, but will be experienced primarily through various forms of documentation, including photography, video, and print. All components of the project will be shared through a variety of platforms: Lapthisophon’s website (stephenlapthisophon.com), the Nasher Sculpture Center website (nashersculpturecenter.org), social media channels and a printed book published by the artist in January 2016.
The accompanying book will be titled Notebook 1967-68, taken from American poet Robert Lowell’s text of the same name. 1967 marks the year of the first Arte Povera exhibitions in Italy, and Lowell’s book chronicles the poet’s life that year, interweaving the personal and public with attention to history, as well as the presence of literary and cultural figures. Lowell’s Notebook 1967-68 serves as an influence on Lapthisophon’s project and also as a model for the mixing of historic, public and private narratives. The book will become a document of the multi-stage project at the Nasher and a space for Lapthisophon to explore auxiliary subjects such as European-American culture, the artwork-as-archive, and the boundary between art and its trace.
About Stephen Lapthisophon:
Stephen Lapthisophon received his M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979 and was based in the Chicago area until 2007 when he relocated to Dallas. Recent exhibitions include the Dallas Biennial (2014), the Dallas Museum of Art (2013) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2006). He was the recipient of the 2012 Moss/Chumley Artist Award for North Texas artists and the 2008 Wynn Newhouse Award for artists with disabilities. Lapthisophon has taught at Columbia College in Chicago, the School of the Art Institute, and the University of Texas at Dallas. He currently teaches art and art history at the University of Texas at Arlington.
About Giuseppe Penone:
Giuseppe Penone was born in 1947 in Garessio, Italy, and currently lives and works in Turin and Paris. He was one of the younger founding members of the influential Italian art movement Arte Povera in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arte in Turin, Italy. Giuseppe Penone's earliest exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1970), Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne (1977); Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden (1978); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1980). More recently he has exhibited at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2013), the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2012), the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Bologna, Italy (2008) and had a retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2004). Short listed for the Turner Prize in 1989, Penone has exhibited in Documenta V (1972), VII (1982), VIII (1987) and XIII (2012) and at the Venice Biennale (2007, 1995, 1986, 1980, and 1978). His work is currently featured at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Giuseppe Penone: Being the River, Repeating the Forest, the first U.S. museum exhibition of the artist’s work in over 30 years.