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MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO
Mirrored surfaces, 1962 – 2000
4th October – 8th November 2003
 Rubbish, 1962-72 Tissue paper on mirrored stainless steel 4 panels, 230x500 cm |
Galleria Il Ponte has been completely redesigned and refurbished. To mark this change in an fitting way, we have organised a show dedicated to one of the foremost protagonists of the renewal of contemporary artistic language, Michelangelo Pistoletto.
The exhibition is composed of a corpus of work from 1962 to 2000. The “mirrored paintings” from 1962-72, Rubbish and Stereo, are especially striking. These are each composed of four panels and in total measure 230x500 cm. They consist of two photographs on tissue paper, painted and stuck onto mirrored stainless steel panels. On display there is also one of the first works where the photographic image is printed using silk-screen printing: Woman having a poo, from 1973. This is also large format (230x120 cm).
The photograph, painted onto tissue paper or silk-screen printed in real size, underlines the non-subjective character of the image and immerses the spectator in the work, in a sort of trompe-l’oeil. Pistoletto himself spells out the new dimension of the mirrored paintings: “In my paintings present and future time are already understood in the continuous mobility of the images, in the continuously-renewed present of the mirror image. These two poles, the static image painted by me and the ever-mobile reflected images, represent the two extremes within which all time is expressed”.
“By discovering a boundary which does not separate art from the everyday and from the present, the artist seems to affirm that the protagonist of the artwork is an open lens, an industrial eye which involves no provocation, no subjectivity. The mirrored surface proposes no ideology, no poeticisation of the world. It does not dream of realistic or lyrical images, rather it is “the present as it is”.
The reflective quality of the material and the quest for a way to give it back its magic are important keys to Pistoletto’s first artistic works and continue – in parallel to his other varied activities – to be important elements in the pieces produced in the new millennium, which end this exhibition.
Biography
of Michelangelo Pistoletto
Catalogue: photographed, 30x22 cm, 32 pages, 10 colour reproductions.
Text by Chiara Bertola.
Edizioni Il Ponte, Florence.
Press office: Susanna Fabiani: catalogue and photographs available
on request
susy@galleriailponte.com