MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO (B. 1933)

"I believe that the term "time" is fundamental to the understanding of my work. There is a difference between my work and "art" in its traditional sense: my goal is not just two dimensions, not just three, but four dimensions. If my work is not read in terms of its four-dimensionality, that is, including the fourth dimension, time, then it will be misinterpreted, people will have great trouble understanding it. I feel that we have to start considering this dimension of time on the basis of fundamental works such as my mirror pictures. In traditional painting, representation and drawing cover the entire surface. This is a static aspect which has calmed down through the years as a univocal signal. It can correspond to the figure that I place on the surfaces of the mirror paintings, a fixed signal, an image "snapped" at a certain historical moment. But in my mirror paintings the image coexists with every present moment. Old paintings exist today without containing the presence of our time; their only presence is that of their own time. It is our job to make them live, make them feel at home, enjoy them, criticize them, locate them historically, according to our present day interest"
(M. Pistoletto, interviewed by Germano Celent, "Continuum," Pistoletto, Division and Multiplication of the Mirror,
exh. cat., New York and Rome, 1988, p. 31).