MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO
HALL 2.0
F16
Uscendo [Exiting], 2020
Silkscreen on supermirror stainless steel
cm.h. 250 x 125
Provenance: the artist
Galleria Christian Stein
Since the 1960s, Michelangelo Pistoletto has been creating his famous Mirror Paintings, replacing the traditional canvas with a mirror-polished stainless steel surface onto which he applies images taken from photographs or silkscreen prints. These works blur the boundaries between reality and representation: the viewer, the space, and the image merge and transform one another, transcending any contemplative distance. The reflective surface reflects the real world but at the same time inverts it, generating what Michel Foucault defines as a “heterotopic space”: a place in continuity with our own, yet removed from the possibility of being inhabited. Among the most iconic figures is the cage, a powerful metaphor for threshold, passage, and barrier, capable of making visible the tensions that have run through the artist’s work from the very beginning.
Michelangelo Pistoletto has been represented by Christian Stein since 1967.
Michelangelo Pistoletto lives and works in Biella, Italy. He is one of the most influential artists of his generation and a pioneer of the Arte Povera movement. For over half a century, Pistoletto has sought to merge art and life through sculptural installations, experimental performances, and, most famously, his iconic mirror paintings, which serve as the foundation of his artistic practice. His work appears in the most important collections worldwide, including: MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Roma; Metropolitan Museum, New York, Chicago Art Institute, Chicago; Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring/New York; Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence; British Museum, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Museo del Novecento, Milan; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museo MADRE, Naples; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Parkview Museum, Singapore.
(1933, Biella)