'Mirroring: Lucio Fontana and Michelangelo Pistoletto'

"Mirroring: Lucio Fontana and Michelangelo Pistoletto" is on show at Prada Rong Zhai, a historic 1918 residence in Shanghai restored and reopened in 2017.

For the first time Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) and Michelangelo Pistoletto, two prominent figures of the post-war Italian and international art scene, are put in dialogue.

The exhibition features 26 works created from the 1950s to today. These works highlight the artists' efforts to explore new ways of expressing themselves and their decision to move away from traditional materials, techniques and themes that were seen as outdated.

In 1948 Fontana created the Concettospaziale (Spatial Concept), and in 1961 Pistoletto realized Quadrospecchiante (Mirror Painting) the spatio-temporal work. The three-dimensionality of their artistic objects is another focus of the exhibition.

The exhibition explores the complementary and partly divergent directions in which the two artists overcome the two-dimensional limits of the pictorial surface.

For example, the pieces "Spatial Concept 1949-50" and "Spatial Concept 1961," displayed at the exhibition, show the core of Fontana's artistic exploration. They feature two iconic and groundbreaking elements of his work: the holes, which he started creating in 1949, and the slashes. In these canvases, the silver paint expands the traditional limits of paintings.

In 1955, Pistoletto held his first solo exhibition in Turin, Italy, intensely exploring his own identity through his "Self Portrait" series. "Mirroring" includes works such as "Man Seen from Behind", where the artist paints his own figure on a black background made reflective by a thick layer of transparent paint, and "Human Figure," in which stainless steel replaces a traditional painting technique. In both artworks, the human figure is portrayed with its back turned to the viewer, overcoming the conventional approach to portraits and dissolving the boundaries between the artwork and the viewer.

If you go

Date: Through June 15 (close on Mondays), 10am-6pm

Address: 186 Shanxi Rd N. 陕西北路186号

Tickets: Free

Please make an appointment via WeChat mini-program: Prada荣宅