MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO. Before the Mirror, Breaks the Mirror, 2015

The catalogue was published on the occasion of Frieze Masters, 2015.

This is the first volume of the series, published by Gli Ori, dedicated to the participation of the Galleria Continua at Frieze Masters. 

This catalogue, conceived in two volumes, describes the main stages of Michelangelo Pistoletto's artistic process: the self-portraiture, the relationships between the support and the paint object, the artwork and the public, art and society. 

Before the Mirror there were life-sized self-portraits on gold or black painted ground. Only from 1962, Pistoletto started to realize self-portraits on tissue paper, by enlarging a photograph to life size, and replacing the former support with a sheet of mirror-finished stainless steel. 

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Breaks the Mirror deals with the performance of Pistoletto breaking the mirror with a wood hummer. The fragments fall to the ground, leaving holes of different form inside each of the large mirrors. 

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Among the many artistic, cultural and social implications regarding the multiplication of the mirror through its shattering, one is of particular importance, and it relates to the fourth dimension, active here in the relationship between the present and the memory.

Michelangelo Pistoletto