ART CITIES:London-Michelangelo Pistoletto
Michelangelo Pistoletto believes that artists have as mission to change the world. Since the ‘60s Michelangelo Pistoletto’s work has followed two paths, a body of Conceptual sculpture grounded in the tenets of Arte Povera and an ongoing iconic series of Mirror Paintings. Representing his dual interest in Conceptualism and figurative representation, together these bodies of work have earned Michelangelo Pistoletto enduring international recognition.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Simon Lee Gallery Gallery Archive
In “Scaffali”, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s solo exhibition at Simon Lee Gallery, are on presentation works from his most recent series of mirror paintings, in which he directs his attention towards the subject of scaffali, or shelves. In 1961, after making a series of reflecting black-ground paintings significantly entitled “The Present”, Pistoletto conducted a series of experiments intended to achieve the highest degree of objectivity. To make the background more reflective he tried using aluminum sheets, which he applied to the canvas. Finally he identified mirror-finished steel as the best material. To give maximum objectivity to the figure, too, he decided to use photography. Several trials followed. He applied cutout photographic images or photographic gelatin directly to polished steel, a solution he discarded because the photograph continued to look like an inserted object that contrasted with the immateriality of the reflected image. He also tried to use a normal mirror, another solution rejected because of the problems posed by the thickness of the glass. At last, in 1962, he perfected the technique of his subsequent mirror paintings: a sheet of mirror-finished stainless steel fitted with an image obtained by tracing a photograph, enlarged to life size, with the tip of a brush, on tissue paper. After 1971 the painted tissue was replaced by a silkscreen of the photographic image. The mirror paintings are the foundation of Pistoletto’s oeuvre, both of the artworks he makes and of his theoretical reflection in which he constantly returns to them to study their meaning in depth and to develop their implications. The essential characteristics the artist identifies in them, are: the dimension of time (not just represented, but presented in reality); the inclusion in the work of the viewer and his/her surroundings (which make “the self-portrait of the world”); the joining of couples of opposite polarity (static/dynamic, surface/depth, absolute/relative, etc.), constituted and activated by the interaction between the photographic image and what goes on in the virtual space generated by the reflecting surface; the placement of the mirror paintings no longer at window height, as paintings are traditionally hung, but on the floor (which creates a passage through which the space in which they are shown continues in the virtual space of the work, a door that opens between art and life. In the “Scaffali” Pistoletto takes his investigation into the relationship between stasis and activity in the mirror paintings a step further. Depicting display cabinets and industrial storage units laden with the tools of a broad range of trades, from crates of fresh produce and canisters of paint, to cleaning supplies, camera apparatus and spare automobile parts, the “Scaffali” evoke a sense of dormancy at odds with the ever fluctuating presence of the viewer.
Info: Simon Lee Gallery, 12 Berkeley Street, London, Duration: 23/2-7/4/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.simonleegallery.com
