First Floor Installation Views

Throughout his career, Michelangelo Pistoletto has engaged with themes of the individual’s place within society and history, creating works that contrast the fixity of the past with the ever-changing nature of the present. As you enter, Viceversa (1971) invites contemplation of the structure of time and history, and our place within it. A mirror affixed to the reverse of a seventeenth-century frame reflects the viewer’s likeness and surroundings, symbolically looking back on the trajectory of human history that has brought us to this moment. The frame itself is empty, demonstrating the limitless possibilities of the future—our ability to change and shape what comes next.

Color and Light (2016 and 2017) similarly deals with one’s place within a social and historical continuum. Of this series, Pistoletto has said: “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. . . . 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.”

The Metroquadrato d’infinito (Square Meter of Infinity, 1966) is a two-dimensional variation of the Metrocubo d’inifito (Cubic Meter of Infinity, 1966–70) found on the third floor. Unlike the Metrocubo d’infinito, in which six interior-facing mirrors form a cube containing an unviewable but infinitely reflecting environment, Metroquadrato d’infinito features two mirrors face-to-face. This work explores the unrepeatable quality of each instant in time, and the limitless and unknowable nature of human experience.