Lévy Gorvy Dayan has opened the significant solo exhibition Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step Beyond, organized in collaboration with Galleria Continua.
This major presentation will feature painting andsculpture spanning the Italian artist’s practice from the early 1960s to the present, illuminating the radicality of hisevolving oeuvre. In the words of Pistoletto, “If art is life’s mirror, then I am the mirror maker.”To Step Beyondwill highlight the artist’s use of the mirror in his practice, beginning with the historic paintingUomogrigio di schiena(Gray Man from the Back, 1961). In theQuadri specchianti(Mirror Paintings, 1962–) that followed,Pistoletto activated space, perspective, and dimension to revolutionize the relationship between the work of art andthe viewer. Tracing the progression of his postwar mirrored works to their final form in highly polished stainless steel,To Step Beyondwill present examples of Pistoletto’s early photographic and silkscreened figuration withScala(Ladder,1964) andAttesa n.1(Waiting, 1973)—as well as the recent self-portraitQR Code Possession – Autoritratto(2019/23) andnever-before-seen mirror paintings created on the occasion of the exhibition
Premiering at Lévy Gorvy Dayan is the most expansiveColor and Light(2024) the artist has produced, created as animmersive installation for the Beaux-Arts gallery space at 19 East 64th Street. Initiated in 2014, theColor and Lightseries draws on themes of perception, time, history, and tradition that traverse Pistoletto’s oeuvre. Here, in gildedframes, silver and black cut mirror fragments feature against bold single-color backgrounds, hued in a spectrum fromred, orange, yellow, and green, to blue. The work calls forth Pistoletto’s artistic beginnings, from his use of jute in hisearly career as a painter to his declaration of 1962, the first year of his mirrors: “On the one hand the canvas, in theother the mirror—with myself in between. One eye staring at the canvas, the other at the mirror. If you gaze at themintensely enough the objects gradually become superimposed: my mirror portrait transfers itself onto the canvaswhile 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 oneselffor being.’ My every action is in this direction.” His new and recent works hold true to this sentiment, from hissculptural mirrors that advance his foundationalOggetti 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 initiativesTerzoparadiso(Third Paradise) andFormula della creazione(Formula of Creation). Pistoletto’s art creates the opportunity forconfrontation, recognition, and interaction—to consider, in his words, “the state of things” and to step beyond
Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step Beyond January 16th – March 29th 2025, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York
About the artist
Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in 1933 in Biella, Italy, where he continues to live and work today. In 1962, heinitiated hisQuadri specchianti(Mirror Paintings), for which he gained international recognition. A participantin New York’s Pop art scene and pioneer of the Arte Povera movement, he created his sculptural seriesOggetti inmeno(Minus Objects) in 1965–66 and began his evolving body ofVenere degli stracci(Venus in Rags) in 1967, both ofwhich harness everyday materials. That same year, he began orchestrating happenings and performances outside oftraditional exhibition spaces and founded the interdisciplinary theater troupeLo Zoo(The Zoo) in 1968. In the 1990s,he established Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, placing social change at the heart of his practice. He recentlypublishedOminiteismo e demopraxia. Manifesto per una rigenerazione della società(Hominitheism and Demopraxy:Manifesto for the Regeneration of Society, Chiarelettere, 2017) andFormula della creazione(Formula of Creation,Edizioni Cittadellarte, 2022). In 2023, Pistoletto presented a series of new works that employed QR code and AItechnologies, coining the termmetaopera. He has been the recipient of numerous international awards, including theGolden 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 sculpturesare held in the collections of major international museums. Pistoletto’s website can be found at https://www.pistoletto.it/
