For the first time, Shanghai hosts an exhibition of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s works: called The Formula of Life, it opened yesterday at the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum. The solo exhibition, which will run until Thursday 30th September, highlights part of the history of the Biellese artist through 19 works, including installations, mirror paintings and documents. The symbolic sign of the Third Paradise is also featured: “The exhibition, curated by Michelangelo Pistoletto himself – reads the note from the IIC in Shanghai – introduces a new version of one of his most famous works: the Third Paradise, the reconfiguration of the mathematical sign of infinity. The symbol of the Third Paradise derives from the trinamic formula: the dynamics of the number three. In the three interconnected circles, the two external ones represent all the opposites and from their union (the central circle) a third element originates that did not exist before. This is how creation occurs”.

The other works on display retrace part of Pistoletto’s long career as an artist. Some examples? The Rotation of Bodies, the Cubic Metre of Infinity and the mirror paintings. “From the very beginning – the note explains – the artist has placed man at the centre of his interests, a modern man in search of his dimension and his own space”. In this perspective, in the work of Michelangelo Pistoletto the mirror represents an image of the world both of man and of society, but also of cosmic space. “It seems clear to me – says the artist – that the space occupied by this reflection is neither limited nor exclusively individual, it is a cosmic space of totality and, therefore, of everyone”. The artistic initiative has been organised on the occasion of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the proclamation of the Italian Republic by the Consulate General of Italy and the Shanghai Cultural Institute, in collaboration with the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum and Galleria Continua.