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The Arts Intel Report

Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step Beyond

Michelangelo Pistoletto, QR Code Possession – Autoritratto, 2019-23.

Jan 16 – Mar 29, 2025
19 E 64th St, New York, NY 10065

Michelangelo Pistoletto, now 91, has said, “If art is life’s mirror, then I am the mirror maker.” The Italian painter has worked in many mediums over the decades but his most iconic pieces are his paintings on mirrors, a practice he began in 1961 with Uomo grigio di schiena (Gray Man from the Back). In a survey of his career, Lévy Gorvy Dayan follows his earliest 1960s works as a pioneer of the Arte Povera movement to a recent self-portrait in which he is covered in QR codes. The focal point, however, is a series of never-before-seen mirror printings, “Color and Light” (2024), created specifically for this show. Addressing every corner of Pistoletto’s practice, the exhibition fuses themes of identity, modernity, and self-reflection. —Lucy Horowitz