NEW YORK, NY.- Lévy Gorvy Dayan announces the significant solo exhibition Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step Beyond, organized in collaboration with Galleria Continua. This major presentation will feature painting and sculpture spanning the Italian artist’s practice from the early 1960s to the present, illuminating the radicality of his evolving oeuvre. In the words of Pistoletto, “If art is life’s mirror, then I am the mirror maker.” To Step Beyond will highlight the artist’s use of the mirror in his practice, beginning with the historic painting Uomo grigio di schiena (Gray Man from the Back, 1961). In the Quadri specchianti (Mirror Paintings, 1962–) that followed, Pistoletto activated space, perspective, and dimension to revolutionize the relationship between the work of art and the viewer. Tracing the progression of his postwar mirrored works to their final form in highly polished stainless steel, To Step Beyond will present examples of Pistoletto’s early photographic and silkscreened figuration with Scala (Ladder, 1964) and Attesa n.1 (Waiting, 1973)—as well as the recent self-portrait QR Code Possession – Autoritratto (2019/23) and never-before-seen mirror paintings created on the occasion of the exhibition.
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Premiering at Lévy Gorvy Dayan is the most expansive Color and Light (2024) the artist has produced, created as an immersive installation for the Beaux-Arts gallery space at 19 East 64th Street. Initiated in 2014, the Color and Light series draws on themes of perception, time, history, and tradition that traverse Pistoletto’s oeuvre. Here, in gilded frames, silver and black cut mirror fragments feature against bold single-color backgrounds, hued in a spectrum from red, orange, yellow, and green, to blue. The work calls forth Pistoletto’s artistic beginnings, from his use of jute in his early career as a painter to his declaration of 1962, the first year of his mirrors: “On the one hand the canvas, in the other the mirror—with myself in between. One eye staring at the canvas, the other at the mirror. If you gaze at them intensely enough the objects gradually become superimposed: my mirror portrait transfers itself onto the canvas while remaining in the mirror, and the canvas transfers itself to the mirror becoming one with it.”
Pistoletto once explained: “Some time ago, I wrote this sentence on the wall of my studio: ‘One must prepare oneself for being.’ My every action is in this direction.” His new and recent works hold true to this sentiment, from his sculptural mirrors that advance his foundational Oggetti in Meno (Minus Objects, 1965–66) to his prismatic, large-scale oil paintings of QR codes that harness technology to promote his social and environmental initiatives Terzo Paradiso (Third Paradise) and Formula della Creazione (Formula for Creation). Pistoletto’s art creates the opportunity for confrontation, recognition, and interaction—to consider, in his words, “the state of things” and to step beyond.
Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in 1933 in Biella, Italy, where he continues to live and work today. In 1962, he initiated his Quadri specchianti (Mirror Paintings), for which he gained international recognition. A participant in New York’s Pop art scene and pioneer of the Arte Povera movement, he created his sculptural series Oggetti in meno (Minus Objects) in 1965–66 and began his evolving body of Venere degli stracci (Venus in Rags) in 1967, both of which harness everyday materials. That same year, he began orchestrating happenings and performances outside of traditional exhibition spaces and founded the interdisciplinary theater troupe Lo Zoo (The Zoo) in 1968. In the 1990s, he established Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, placing social change at the heart of his practice. He recently published Ominiteismo e demopraxia. Manifesto per una rigenerazione della società (Hominitheism and Demopraxy: Manifesto for the Regeneration of Society, Chiarelettere, 2017) and La formula della creazione (The Formula of Creation, Edizioni Cittadellarte, 2022). In 2023, Pistoletto presented a series of new works that employed QR code and AI technologies, coining the term metaopera. He has been the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale (2003), Wolf Prize from the Wolf Foundation (2007), and the Praemium Imperiale for Painting from the Japan Art Association (2013). The artist’s paintings and sculptures are held in the collections of major international museums.
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