In 1970 Michelangelo Pistoletto established The Zoo, a theatre group that collectively performed in unconventional spaces throughout Italy and other European cities. The group’s name was first suggested by Carlo Colnaghi, a friend of Pistoletto. In reference to modern civilisation’s organisation of the social body politic, Colnaghi allegedly expressed how he felt like a lion trapped in a cage. Society creates cages that confine every kind of animal, for example, public housing, factories, football stadiums or, in the case of the 'artist' species, biennials, public institutions and private galleries. The concept of La Gabbia, the cage, was already present in Pistoletto's visual vocabulary in 1962 when he conceived his mirrored works which included cages for birds, monkeys and eventually, in its most evocative variation, a cage for the viewer.
Between 1962 and 1974, Pistoletto produced 29 panels, each comprised of a cage section. Viewed as a unified whole the works produce the effect of trapping the viewer inside. Read individually or as in this case a group of four, the work succeeds in creating a profoundly disconcerting environment. La Gabbia, while maintaining a very slick and abstract dimension, is a highly political work with a philosophical line of enquiry. In a minimal and subtle manner Pistoletto questions the human psyche and the foundations of our freedom. Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, architecture and decoration La Gabbia opens up multiple layers of spatial perception. Similar to the creative output of Daniel Buren, Pistoletto’s bars reflect the space in which they are installed. The stripe, like the bar, is an archetypal element which is immediate and direct. Furthermore, like Jasper Johns Flags and Targets the viewer is immediately aware of the universal imagery and the connotations the cage provides.
La Gabbia is very similar in concept to Warhol’s Electric Chair. However, while Warhol was mutating horror in beauty, death into ecstasy, Pistoletto emptied his own symbol of human aberration in order to make physical space for the viewer. In front of Warhol’s work we are observers, in front and inside Pistoletto’s work we participants implemented in an utterly disorientating condition. The Italian artist’s monochromatic palette acquires a unique directness, very similar to what the German theatre director and writer Bertold Brecht was achieving in his celebrated productions. Warhol transformed reality into a dream-like fantasy while Pistoletto builds up in the eyes of the beholder an amazing and acute self-awareness. For Pistoletto we are never looking at the world but we are always part of it, caught in it as visitors or prisoners. Because of its scale La Gabbia is perhaps one of the most significant works by the artists.
While usually the ‘Specchi’, the mirrors, include one or more human figures, La Gabbia addresses the notions of space and void. The bars in their unequivocal simplicity close and open the space, while at the same time creating both the possibility of freedom than its negation. La Gabbia thus has a stern and orderly composition which is reminiscent of the work of minimalist giant Walter De Maria. Meanwhile the present work’s modularity echoes Sol LeWitt’s sculptures; both artists whose work Pistoletto encountered during his travels to the United States on the occasion of his seminal exhibition A Reflected World at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1966. Furthermore, artists such as Jeff Koons expanded Pistoletto’s revolutionary intuition using stainless steel and reflective surfaces for his sculptures, to allow the viewer to be entrapped within his work. In its capacity to enable a dialogue between Pop Art, Minimalism and Arte Povera La Gabbia remains one of the rare examples of contemporary art capable to bridge the late 60’s European political and intellectual attitudes with the American hard-core Conceptual atmosphere of the early 70’s. As a painting, a sculpture and a concept La Gabbia stands unique in its kind.