[Audio Guide]
This sculpture is in a shape much like that of a vase. The “breath” in the title leads us to recall the image of craftsmen blowing into glass in order to make it expand. We get the sense that the work exhaled the breath that transformed itself. As the artist imposed the shape of his own body that decorate the surface from top to bottom, we can see that the apex is modeled on a face. The protuberance in the head part thus becomes a negative of the mouth cavity that contains the exhaled breath. The power of life resides in every thing in the natural world. That this energy changes our perspective is the starting point of Penone’s creative activity. Accordingly, the theme of this work is breathing as the root of human activity. Breath is itself formless, but can give form to other things, and in this way Penone is truly breathing existence into his