During 2023 and 2024 Pistoletto presented a series of new works, for which he coined the term "metaopera” (metawork) in which he employed new technologies such as QR code and Artificial Intelligence. The QR code is first used by Pistoletto in 2019 in the installations Visible and The Art of Demopraxy, presented at Bienalsur in Buenos Aires. Subsequently, the QR code is used in some Mirror Paintings, in which it inserts, within the dialectic between the fixed image of photographic nature and the changing reflected images produced on its surface, an additional mnemonic element, consisting of archival materials on Pistoletto's artistic production that QR codes provide access to.
In QR code Possession - Selfportrait, for example, twelve QR codes are imprinted on the image of the artist's body like tattoos, which link to films or texts related to certain milestones in his research.
QR Code Possession - The Formula of Creation Meetings, first exhibited at Beijing's Continua Gallery in November 2023, consists of twenty colorful QR codes painted on as many large canvases, resembling a series of abstract paintings, which link to video recordings of meetings during which Pistoletto discussed his book The Formula of Creation (2022) along with leading exponents from the worlds of art, politics, science and religion during 2023. A similar work is QR Code Possession - Nouvelle perspective, four colorful QR codes printed on large canvases, displayed on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Continua Gallery in Paris in 2024, each of which links to one of the four meetings between Pistoletto and four curators and art historians held on the first four days of the exhibition.
In the work QR Code Possession - Generative A.I., shown for the first time in one of his solo exhibitions at the Castello di Rivoli in 2023, Pistoletto explores the potential of artificial intelligence, considered by the artist as a large mirror reflecting the collective knowledge accumulated and made available by Internet. Six large colored QR codes printed on canvas link in this case to answers formulated by an artificial intelligence program to six questions posed by the artist about as many works or aspects of his own work.
In Metawork - United Portraits, presented on the occasion of a solo exhibition at the Reggia di Caserta in December 2024, Pistoletto uses an artificial intelligence program to recombine the faces of different people, resuming a 1971 work of his, titled Plagio, made in the context of a complex creative collaboration with Vettor Pisani that developed between 1971 and 1976. In Plagio, an image of Pistoletto's face and an image of Pisani's face, superimposed and placed in a lightbox, merged, generating a new face. In Metawork - United Portraits, on the other hand, we start with photographic portraits of eight Cittadellarte citizens, paired in four different combinations: man-man, woman-woman, man-woman and woman-man. Each pair is merged through an artificial intelligence program, creating hybrid portraits that generate new composite identities. These new faces are in turn further reworked, resulting in more visual and identity fusions and intertwining. Metawork - United Portraits thus presents, through the use of new technologies, that shift from the individual dimension of “I” to the collective dimension of “We” that characterizes much of Pistoletto's work.