In 1964,
at Galleria Sperone, he showed a group of seven works in plexiglass
and photography. The Wall, for example, is a simple sheet
of plexiglass that leans against the wall. Double Stair is
composed of two plexiglass sheets bearing the photographs of the two
ramps that make up the stair. Coffee Table is a plexiglass
parallelepiped to which are applied photos of a coffee table, a record
and a newspaper. The subject matter of the latter two works is also
employed in two mirror paintings of the same period. This is a first
step in the exploration, in real space, of the new spatial dynamic
discovered with the mirror paintings. It is also a stand taken with
respect to the use of everyday objects in the art world that was being
made at the time, and a first declaration of the ‘conceptuality’
of art.
“I find myself inside the picture, beyond the
wall that is perforated (though not, of course, in a material sense)
by the mirror. On the contrary, since I cannot enter it physically,
if I am to inquire into the structure of art I must make the picture
move outward into reality, creating the ‘fiction’ of
being myself beyond the mirror. At the present time it is easy to
play on the identity between reality-object and art-object. A ‘thing’
is not art; but the idea expressed by that same ‘thing’
may be” (Michelangelo Pistoletto, I plexiglass, Galleria
Sperone, Turin 1964).
|
