‘I would first define Irene by saying that basically and above all she writes poetry, haiku in the form of installations and actions. Behind each work lies an extreme and refined search for concept and formalization. In her actions, Irene becomes an iconic presence, a figure without time or space’.
Olga Gambari, from the critical text accompanying Ultime stanze (Vanitas artificis), Autofocus catalogue. 2014

‘Chi semina vento (Who Sows the Wind) is a work of relational art that has managed to create places for encounters, to welcome different sensibilities or personal frailties, of experience and awareness of oneself, others and the environment. Intense creative opportunities, at the same time simple and complex, where those taking part have tools, natural elements and easy instructions to find a centre of gravity, discover and rediscover themselves, express themselves and learn.
Tea Taramino, from the critical text accompanying Chi semina vento, in the catalogue of the solo show and workshop series, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo bookshop area, Turin. 2024

The confinement within the domestic space, along with the domestic chores, returns the feminine in an automatic mode. This automatism in itself quite odious, could be further reinforced by means of selected accessories and actions. However, vegetables, casseroles and cleansing products, instead of conventionally manifesting in the passage, resemble surreal and absurd strangers. None of these elements is in itself absurd. This happens due to the recurrence, the alienation (Verfremdung) created by the image setting, and their usage. The body itself, exposed, transformed and moving, transports the dual message of aggravation and of passing. It is a body, it is subject, feelings, message and a view of oneself: the ‘female gaze’.

Isabelle Demangeat, from the critical text accompanying Covid-19 Isolation journal, in the catalogue of the solo show within the OVNI Festival, Hotel Windsor, Nice. 2022

‘A quest as subdued as it is involving, in its tacit urgency: a secret voice, a hidden thought, a recurring dream never fully interpretable or interpreted that lies before us like an unread letter (according to the ancient chassidim) that no longer leaves us to question it’.
Marco Brunazzi, from the critical presentation text of Covid-19 Isolation Journal. 2021

‘The chapters of Covid-19 Isolation Journal provoke profound, unexpected hilarity, but are also tremendously tragic. A perfect mixture realises the only tragic possible today: the grotesque. The artist’s face is warm but petrified in a hint of a smile, sweet but chilled. Like Buster Keaton, she seriously struggles, acrobatically and surrealistically, with objects and life’.
Giuliana Pititu, from the critical text introducing Covid-19 Isolation Journal. 2021

‘It is because of the complexity of working in a city whose residents are saturated by visual and documentary overexposure of this subject, that Irene Pittatore –who has a long career in aesthetics with a social background and is used to working with groups in delicate situations – has been consulted to give a vision of those who work in tourism in Venice‘.
Pedro Medina Reinon, from the critical text accompanying Lavoratori del Turismo, exhibited at Palazzo Grimani (Venice), at Museo Es Baluard (Palma de Mallorca), at Arts Santa Mònica (Barcelona) and at MACA (Alicante) within the project Ciutat de vacances. Catalogue Consorci de Museus de la Comunitat Valenciana – Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani – Arts Santa Mònica. 2019

“In the arc drawn between the verse, understood as a braying/yell/animal vocalization, and the verse, understood as a metric unit, the artist’s research and poetics are placed: just like the verse-metric unit, Irene Pittatore’s works articulate, from a rhythmic and visual point of view, a representation that presents itself as the result of a creative (poetic) action, which springs from an individual, primordial and repressed force: a brutal and feral force that our society anaesthetises, unable to withstand the impact of its collective plurality, and pushes towards the margins of that technicolour narrative produced by the cultural industry”.
Roberto Mastroianni, from the text accompanying Eros Absconditus, a solo show in cooperation with Playboy Italia, Galleria Opere Scelte, Turin. 2016

“Irene Pittatore’s research is part of an articulated framework, but in Italy still little investigated, that concerns the formal and sense directions of much contemporary artistic production by women; in particular in the research lines of artists such as Carol Rama who, starting from the 1930s, began to paint her Appassionate: constrained women, symbols of fear and coercion, existential states described by the critic Lea Vergine as “pruned, fertilized, exasperated, recklessly pampered fears”. The Turinese artist’s work also compares with Marisa Merz’s refined “Trame” produced as early as the 1960s, alongside the heavy sculpture of the Arte Povera artists and obtained by weaving copper wires that compose elementary geometries. In addition, the photographic documentation of “an action” in which the artist is the sole protagonist also recalls some images by Gina Pane or Ana Mendieta”.
Lisa Parola, from the text accompanying Coazioni, a solo show at Palazzo dell’Arsenale in Turin, on the occasion of the XX FAI Spring Day. 2012

“What struck us most about the work was the way in which the right to speak was exercised, starting from its sophisticated articulation as the condensation of a reflection on certain themes which, starting from an explicit critique of the current art system, opened up to a broader context, raising urgent questions about the responsibility of the artist, his relationship with the public, and the meaning of work immersed in a historical framework marked by increasingly evident and profound changes and conflicts”.
Luisa Perlo and Lisa Parola, from Proposte XXII catalogue. 2008