Image and Body

Michelangelo Pistoletto achieved his international breakthrough with an exhibition of mirror paintings in Paris in 1964. He became a member of the arte povera movement, which broke with traditional notions of art and denied that the quality of a work is determined by its level of craft. New materials were taken into use, and installation and performance art entered the stage. The mirror would prove to be a trademark for Pistoletto, and remains so to this day.

The mirror is a well-known motif in art, and classical paintings were often considered to be reflections of an external reality. At the same time, the mirror, where we also encounter ourselves, is an instrument for self-awareness. And as used by Pistoletto in Image and Body, it also erases the boundaries between the artwork’s space and its surroundings.

Pistoletto created the site-specific installation Image and Body in conjunction with his solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1991. The furniture was originally made for the headquarters of Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway, during its construction in 1904. They were part of the furnishings all the way until the bank moved out of the building in 1988 and the Museum of Contemporary Art moved in. By divesting the pieces of furniture of their original function, turning them upside down, and adding various mirror surfaces, Pistoletto created an installation in a new skylight room that was added when the building was converted into a museum. The mirrors served to merge the space of the installation with its surroundings. The viewers were thus incorporated into the piece in an encounter between present and past.