Color and Light
2016
The space in which this reflection takes place is neither limited nor exclusively individual, but is the cosmic space of totality and therefore of everyone.
—Michelangelo Pistoletto
Began in 2014, the Color and Light series furthers concepts the artist developed in his Black and Light series (began 2007) and touches upon themes that traverse the entirety of the artist’s oeuvre—from his training and earliest paintings, to a conceptual practice honed over decades of his artistic career. The present work consists of eight panels: the first is comprised entirely of mirror, whole but featuring outlines of interconnected shapes, while each of the remaining seven panels repeat a single mirrored form from the first, replacing the remainder of the composition with a single color. For the Color and Light series, the artist reintroduces jute into his practice for the first time since his early career as a painter. The gilded frames around each composition also relate to the artist’s formative training in the history and techniques used in Old Master paintings, and their restoration. Another work from the same series was included in Pistoletto’s exhibition during the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, One and One makes Three, an important presentation spanning Pistoletto’s career.
In Color and Light, Pistoletto’s controlled breaking of the mirror creates a contemporary vision of the virtual nature of reflected images and the corporeity of matter. Of this series, Pistoletto said: “It’s a work of broken mirrors but in an orderly fashion. There is one mirror with all the designs of the breaks, and then every picture here is a piece of that puzzle. Therefore, the big mirror is broken, and every piece takes on its own individuality. That is how it becomes a work of art. But it’s not only the gesture of the break and the figure that it creates in the mirror. The shape of this figure produces many individual mirrors…. They could be in the game of society, where every person is a piece of the mirror, just as every person is a piece of society. Society is like a big mirror.”
MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO
Color and Light
2016
Jute, mirrors, and gilded wood frames
Eight parts, each: 70 7/8 x 47 1/4 inches (180 x 120 cm)