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Lot Essay
This work is accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist and dated 23 May 1995.
Executed in 1966, Mica has a glimmer that relates to the Mirror Paintings that Pistoletto had been creating during the previous few years. This glittery appearance means that the environment located in front of the work becomes involved with the surface, causing reflections, shifting nuances of light and shade. Indeed, the viewer too changes the appearance of the work, becoming fractally reflected but shimmeringly implicated, every movement bringing about a change. In this way, Mica, like the Mirror Paintings, invokes the fourth dimension, time, as well as the two dimensions of the surface or the third dimension of the work's depth.
In its insistent focus on the surface itself, Mica appears to crush these dimensions, to shatter them. This work appears as a pulverised mirror, and this process of pulverisation was one that was crucial to Pistoletto's works. 'Object, idea, instrument, action, space have become a cosmic powder for me,' he explained, 'as well as a distancing to project me into the universe of vast distances, where the great presences pulverise. Thus, the object vanishes; masses become minimal, yet, at the same time, they grow beyond measure' (Pistoletto, quoted in G. Celant, Michelangelo Pistoletto, New York, 1989, p. 175).
Executed in 1966, Mica has a glimmer that relates to the Mirror Paintings that Pistoletto had been creating during the previous few years. This glittery appearance means that the environment located in front of the work becomes involved with the surface, causing reflections, shifting nuances of light and shade. Indeed, the viewer too changes the appearance of the work, becoming fractally reflected but shimmeringly implicated, every movement bringing about a change. In this way, Mica, like the Mirror Paintings, invokes the fourth dimension, time, as well as the two dimensions of the surface or the third dimension of the work's depth.
In its insistent focus on the surface itself, Mica appears to crush these dimensions, to shatter them. This work appears as a pulverised mirror, and this process of pulverisation was one that was crucial to Pistoletto's works. 'Object, idea, instrument, action, space have become a cosmic powder for me,' he explained, 'as well as a distancing to project me into the universe of vast distances, where the great presences pulverise. Thus, the object vanishes; masses become minimal, yet, at the same time, they grow beyond measure' (Pistoletto, quoted in G. Celant, Michelangelo Pistoletto, New York, 1989, p. 175).