Tag Archives: maurizio cattelan

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: “AMERICA”

Maurizio Cattelan has replaced the Guggenheim’s fifth-floor toilet with a golden throne called “America” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Friday – Wednesday (ongoing), $18-$25 (pay-what-you-wish Saturday 5:45-7:45)
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org
“america slideshow”

In November 2011, Italian artist and prankster Maurizio Cattelan held a very public execution of his career, literally hanging his works from the Guggenheim’s skylight ceiling in a unique and extremely popular retrospective, called “All,” that he said marked his retirement from the art world, at the age of fifty-one. But five years later, the provocateur who drowned Pinocchio (“Daddy Daddy”), dropped a meteor on the pope (“La Nona Hora”), made a gentle, kneeling sculpture of Adolf Hitler (“Him”), taped his gallerist to a wall (“A Perfect Day”), constructed the famous Hollywood sign on a garbage dump in Palermo (“Hollywood”), and placed a giant marble middle finger in front of the Milan stock exchange (“L.O.V.E.”) is back with his first new piece in five years, “America.” In the Guggenheim’s fifth-floor single-occupancy restroom, Cattelan has installed an exact replica of the museum’s standard toilet, cast in glittering eighteen-karat solid gold — and yes, it’s fully functional. Since September 2016, museumgoers have been waiting anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for the privilege of going number one or number two on the majestic throne, which is obsessively cleaned every fifteen minutes. You must sit on it; the seat should not be lifted, as one unlucky male user discovered early on after breaking it. Although the piece was created before Donald Trump won the presidential election, “America” certainly references his preference for gold objects, particularly when his name is involved; Cattelan has called it “one-percent art for the ninety-nine percent.” (Death might be the great equalizer, but so is the basic human need to evacuate waste; everybody poops.) The piece is also intrinsically linked with Toilet Paper magazine, a publication run by Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. In addition, the work is an homage to Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” the upside-down porcelain urinal, credited to “R. Mutte,” that was rejected on April 10, 1917, from a supposedly all-inclusive exhibition; the ready-made urinal, which forever changed the art world, is currently celebrating its centennial, with special events and shows being held around the world.

You can do a lot more than just touch this work of art at the Guggenheim (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“America” is also reminiscent of the scene in Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part One when a caveman (Sid Caesar) creates the first known work of art, a painting of an animal on a cave wall — and then the first critic (Andréas Voutsinas) comes along and urinates on it. Cattelan has been met with much criticism during his thirty-year career — along with, of course, high praise and works going at auction for millions of dollars — but he’s probably reveling in the thought that so many people are happily relieving themselves on his usable sculpture. In fact, people are so used to being told not to touch art that many of those on line don’t initially understand that “America” is fully participatory; it is not meant to merely be gawked at and photographed. The “Guggen-head,” as Cattelan dubbed it, has also been added to the second edition of the “All” catalog, with former Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector explaining that it offers “unprecedented access to something of unquestionable value.” To find out more about Cattelan, who loves playing games with virtually every aspect of his life and career, check out Maura Axelrod’s documentary Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back, which opened April 14 at the Quad; although it is named for Cattelan’s first major show, in which he locked the door of a gallery and put a sign on it that read “Be Right Back” (in Italian), it could also refer to his return to the art world with “America,” which is on long-term view at the Guggenheim; however, there’s been no word whether it’s a onetime thing or the beginning of a new phase of his career, and even if there was, that doesn’t mean it’s real. In the meantime, head over to the Guggenheim and make full use of “America,” coming up with whatever metaphor you’d like as you relieve yourself of at least part of your daily burden. Or just simply enjoy the rare privilege of having private time with a rather beautiful and expensive work of art.

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: BE RIGHT BACK

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: BE RIGHT BACK explores career of controversial Italian artist and provocateur

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: BE RIGHT BACK (Maura Axelrod, 2016)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, April 14
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
www.mauriziocattelanfilm.com

Italian artist and prankster extraordinaire Maurizio Cattelan has built his wildly successful career out of controversy, provocation, and mystery, taking on the very art world that has made him a superstar. Documentarian Maura Axelrod includes the same elements in her vastly entertaining film, Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back. The title refers to both the beginning of Cattelan’s career, a Milan solo show in which he locked the gallery door and hung a sign on it that said “Torno Subito” (Be Right Back) as well as what might or might not be the end, as he announced his retirement following the brilliant 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim, “All,” in which he hung all of his works from the Guggenheim ceiling, as if signaling their death. “His career is based on anecdotes and lies and imaginary stories,” Milan gallerist Massimo De Carlo says in the film. “Some people are suspicious that Maurizio is pulling the wool over their eyes and he is some kind of flamboyant artistic con man,” adds art historian Sarah Thornton. “I think he’s probably one of the greatest artists that we have today, but he could also be the worst. It’s gonna be one or the other; it’s not gonna fall in the middle,” cracks one of his collectors. Axelrod also speaks with former Guggenheim artistic director Nancy Spector, former Public Art Fund director Tom Eccles, Cattelan archive director Victoria Armutt, Guggenheim curator Katherine Brinson, gallerists Marian Goodman and Emmanuel Perrotin, art critics Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian, and Cattelan’s sister, Giada, former fiancée Victoria Cabello, and current girlfriend Victoria Yee Howe. They share stories about Cattelan’s working methods and proclivities, delving into such pieces as “Daddy Daddy,” a facedown Pinocchio in a pool of water that was inspired by Cattelan’s childhood; “La Nona Ora” (The Ninth Hour), a lifelike sculpture of the pope knocked down by a meteorite; “Another Fucking Readymade,” in which he stole the inventory of another artist’s show and claimed them as his own; “Him,” a rendering of a kneeling child who turns out to be Adolf Hitler; and “L.O.V.E.” (Libertà, Odio, Vendetta, Eternità), a marble sculpture of a giant middle finger in Milan’s financial district. He even staged his own pseudo–Caribbean Biennial, featuring such artists as Wolfgang Tillmans, Elizabeth Peyton, Gabriel Orozco, Pipilotti Rist, Chris Ofili, and Mariko Mori gathered together on the island of St. Kitts. (The critics were not amused.)

“Daddy Daddy” holds one of the keys to the mystery that is Maurizio Cattelan

Meanwhile, the artist speaks profusely on camera, sharing such insights as “I knew what was expected of me and I decided I was going to be something else” and “I’ve always been very good at faking things.” Indeed, about two-thirds of the way through the film, there is a fabulous twist that only art-world insiders are likely to have guessed, as Axelrod takes a page from Orson Welles’s magical F for Fake. Writer, producer, and director Axelrod incorporates home movies, family photographs, playful animation, and new and old footage to try to figure out just what makes Cattelan tick, what he’s really like, but she lets viewers in only so far, like his tiny elevator installation in which no one can fit. Among the many words used to describe the iconoclastic artist and his oeuvre are “tasteless,” “profound,” “funny,” “tragic,” “disrespectful,” “vulnerable,” and “uncanny beauty,” as people also point out that he is anxious, very demanding to live and work with, and, while seeing art as commodity, uses the vanity of collectors against themselves. Of course, all of those are true, in one way or another. His art can be as thrilling as it is offensive, as silly as it is prescient as he explores such themes as failure, alienation, mortality, and personal identity. “You need to go pretty far, otherwise the piece doesn’t exist,” he says. “You need to push your friends and enemies and collaborators further, and you have to be uncomfortable about it. The further you go, the more satisfaction is created by the level of discomfort in which all the participants were put.” The last section of the film details “All,” which a clearly uncomfortable Spector had her doubts about but insisted that “the risk had to be real,” worrying that it would cause the Guggenheim to collapse within itself but they had to proceed. And as far as Cattelan’s retirement is concerned, this past September he installed “America” at the Guggenheim, an eighteen-karat-gold fully functional toilet, the first new piece he has exhibited since “All.” Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back opens April 14 at the newly renovated Quad Cinema, with Axelrod participating in Q&As on April 14 (with Spector and New Museum artistic director Massimiliano Gioni) and April 15 at 7:45 and April 16 at 5:30.

FRIEZE ART FAIR HIGHLIGHTS

Alex Da Corte’s giant floating baby and part of Heather Phillipson’s “100% Other Fibres” greet Frieze visitors (all photos by twi-ny/mdr unless otherwise noted)

FRIEZE ART FAIR
Randall’s Island Park
May 5-8, $29-$49 per day
friezenewyork.com

On a cold, rainy Friday afternoon, Frieze was about as comfortable and manageable as any major international art fair can get. You could take your time looking at the art, easily procure a table at one of the restaurants, and not have to wait on long lines to use the rest rooms. At the fifth annual Frieze New York, held on Randall’s Island, video, contemporary photography, and outdoor sculpture are out while large-scale painting, mid-to-late-twentieth-century photography, and performance are in. Below are our recommended highlights, in no particular order; also be on the lookout for works by Carolee Schneeman, Liz Magic Laser, Rieko Otake, Bernd and Hilla Becher, John Divola, Nancy Holt, Frank Bowling, and reverse pickpocket David Horvitz.

A troupe of mimes moves throughout the fair in a green vehicle in Anthea Hamilton’s “Kar-A-Sutra (After Mario Bellini)”

Eduardo Navarro’s “Instructions from the Sky” remained indoors because of the weather

Maurizio Cattelan pays tribute to the Daniel Newburg Gallery by restaging his 1994 U.S. debut, “Warning! Enter at Your Own Risk. Do Not Touch, Do Not Feed, No Smoking, No Photographs, No Dogs, Thank you.” complete with chandelier and Gabriel the donkey, who recently appeared at the Met in La Bohème.

Look inside Mika Rottenberg’s “Lips” for a surprise video, right next to her sizzling “AC Trio”

Hauser & Wirth’s staff have a tough time stopping people from touching Roni Horn’s untitled glass pieces

You can see more of N. Dash’s beautiful works of adobe, acrylic, gesso, string, canvas, and jute at Casey Kaplan in Chelsea

Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija collaborated on eight-minute video installation “Stories Are Propaganda”

Spencer Lowell’s “New York, New York, New York” provides unique look at Queens Museum Panorama (photo courtesy Queens Museum)

Alex Katz’s “Nine Women” is significantly smaller than 1982 Times Square mural

Perhaps Krzysztof Wodiczko’s twenty-five-year-old “Homeless Vehicle Project” could still help New York City’s homeless crisis

Michelle Grabner’s untitled enamel on panel painting is a bright standout

François Morellet turns Galerie Herve Bize space into a dizzying experience

Perennial favorite Galerie Eigen + Art features new works by David Schnell, including “Becken” (above) and “Pakt” (photo courtesy Galerie Eigen + Art)

Fred Wilson’s “Emilia’s Mirror — Act 5, Scene 2” is part of Pace installation

Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel’s “Stoneware Mural with Pipes n°4” is part of Frame Stand Prize-winning installation “Truth and Consequences”

A SECRET AFFAIR: SELECTIONS FROM THE FUHRMAN FAMILY COLLECTION

Ron Mueck’s ultra-realistic “Spooning Couple” is part of “A Secret Affair” at FLAG (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The FLAG Art Foundation
545 West 25th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday through Saturday through May 16, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
212-206-0220
flagartfoundation.org

The name of the current exhibit at the FLAG Art Foundation, “A Secret Affair,” conjures thoughts of clandestine coupling. Indeed, the show, which continues through May 16, features works that explore, both as physical objects and conceptual ideas, the notion of pairs, of the double, built around what senior curator Heather Pesanti refers to in her catalog essay, “The Subversive Body,” as “meditations on the most primal and basic emotional need in life: that of human connection.” Spread across two floors of the Chelsea gallery, “A Secret Affair: Selections from the Fuhrman Family Collection” consists primarily of sculptures, along with several C-prints, that are either partnered within themselves or with another piece, by the same or a different artist. The subjects in Ron Mueck’s ultra-realistic but miniature “Two Women,” a pair of older women in heavy coats standing together but looking away, might recall fondly, or jealously, the nearby “Spooning Couple,” in which a partially naked man and woman spoon each other on a hard surface representing a bed. Meanwhile, not far away, Subodh Gupta offers a counterpart, “Spooning,” a sculpture of two large-scale stainless-steel spoons one on top of the other. In Juan Muñoz’s “Two Laughing at Each Other,” a pair of men sit in chairs halfway up a wall, not far from Maurizio Cattelan’s “Frank and Jamie,” two life-size wax figures of New York City policemen standing on their heads. In Louise Bourgeois’s “Couple,” a naked and armless man and woman, in pink fabric, face each other in a vitrine, belly to belly, while Yinka Shonibare’s “Girl Girl Ballerina” depicts a pair of headless female figures wearing colorfully patterned fabrics, hiding guns behind their backs. Gillian Wearing’s lifelike “Olia,” a topless model in jeans, finds its counterpoint in Marc Quinn’s “Sphinx (Fortuna),” a painted bronze sculpture of Kate Moss in a seemingly impossible pose. And Thomas Schütte’s patinated bronze and steel busts, “Wicht (4)” and “Wicht (7),” are on plinths next to each other, a pair of mysterious, already fading figures.

Fuhrman Family Collection exhibition focuses on doubling and human connection (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Even the single pieces in the exhibition, curated by Louis Grachos, deal with pairs. “I decided that the exhibition would focus on interrelated themes concerning the body and the figure, as well as coupling and conversation,” Grachos explains in his catalog foreword. In Charles Ray’s “Light from the Left,” the artist offers flowers to a woman, trying to make a connection. In Katharana Fritsch’s “Oktopus,” an orange cephalopod mollusc holds aloft a faceless human figure in black in one of its tentacles. Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s 1995 untitled work comprises two silver-plated brass rings flat against a wall, touching each other, evoking the magician’s trick as well as the prize one can win on a merry-go-round. Anish Kapoor’s “Blood Solid,” a red balloon-like sculpture that resembles a huge drop of blood, invites viewers to see their reflection in it, their own double. There are also works by Matthew Barney, Kiki Smith, Robert Gober, Jim Lambie, David Hammons, and Jim Hodges that provide yet more insight on the theme. In conjunction with Frieze week’s Chelsea Night, Hodges, whose “picturing: my heart” dual skulls and “First Light (Beginning of the End)” mirrored glass pieces are on display at FLAG, will be at the gallery on May 16 at 5:00 for a special closing conversation with FLAG founder Glenn Fuhrman, who owns the collection with his wife, Amanda.

KRIS PERRY: INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION

Kris Perry’s “Industrial Evolution” will close September 29 with an evening of free music (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Family Business
520 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Saturday, September 29, free, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00
www.familybusiness.us
www.krisperry.com

For most of the run of Kris Perry’s “Industrial Evolution” installation in Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni’s tiny storefront Family Business space in Chelsea that opens out onto Twenty-first St., visitors have come and pounded on the drums and played various other percussion and stringed instruments, made from found machine parts and other materials. But in a grand finale on September 29, a group of professional musicians and artists will take over the reins from six to eight o’clock in the evening. The miniconcerts, beginning on the hour, will feature drummer Chris Turco, composer and editor Ben Fundis, multidisciplinary audiovisual artist Brian Dewan, Nashville musician and engineer John Rosenthal, folk rocker Elvis Perkins, and Replacements and Guns N’ Roses bassist Tommy Stinson improvising on the metal machines. The Hudson-based Perry, who was born in Berkeley and is the founder of Fantastic Fabrication, specializes in creating kinetic sculptures and unusual instruments, several of which are on view in the fanciful “Industrial Evolution,” which was curated by culture writer Linda Yablonsky and also includes video components.

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: ALL

Maurizio Cattelan says farewell to the art world in spectacular retrospective (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Friday – Wednesday through January 22, $18 (pay-what-you-wish Saturday 5:45-7:45)
Book signing Monday, January 9, 6:00
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org
maurizio cattelan: all slideshow

Throughout his career, Italian visual artist and provocateur Maurizio Cattelan has been giving the middle finger to anyone and everyone he can, both literally and figuratively. He regularly stands convention — and policemen — on its head in conceptual works that range from putting a sign on a gallery door that says “Be back soon” (“Torno subito”) to placing a thirty-six-foot-high middle finger, titled “L.O.V.E.,” in front of the Milan Stock Exchange, courting controversy wherever he goes. For a career retrospective that also supposedly represents his retirement from the art world, the fifty-one-year-old Cattelan vetoed a chronological arrangement of his oeuvre situated in the Guggenheim’s bays and instead opted to have 128 of his pieces hung from the museum’s ceiling to create a brand-new, 129th work, a kind of mass execution in the form of a child’s deranged mobile (or should that be “a deranged child’s mobile”?) that offers a fond farewell, one final middle finger saying goodbye. And what a goodbye it is.

Maurizio Cattelan hangs himself in effigy in Guggenheim retrospective (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

As visitors make their way up the Guggenheim’s winding path, they are greeted by a vast collection of taxidermied animals (including a squirrel that has committed suicide, various sleeping dogs, and a horse with a wooden sign reading “INRI” above it), children hanging from their necks, Nazi salutes, the pope crushed by a meteorite, a woman clutching her breasts, a miniature man sitting atop a safe, a kneeling Adolf Hitler, an elephant draped in a KKK hood, a shopping cart, a barefoot JFK in his coffin, a chessboard composed of heroes and villains, a boy sitting at a desk with pencils pierced through his hands, an elderly woman in a refrigerator, a giant foosball table, and, yes, the enormous hand in which all fingers but the raised middle one have been cut off. Cattelan is also physically present in the installation, hanging in effigy wearing a Joseph Beuys suit on a Marcel Breuer clothing rack and with his last name shining in white neon script. Each turn offers museumgoers a fresh perspective on Cattelan’s work, with revolving juxtapositions placing the seemingly chaotic arrangement into continually changing contexts, resulting in an endless array of new comparisons that dazzle and delight. Even the interactive app associated with the show is unusual and offbeat, hosted by John Waters and featuring interviews with artists, critics, gallerists, and curators. Although “All” is filled with so many references to death, at its heart it is really a celebration of the oddity of life, an exciting and dare we say, fun retrospective that only a character like Cattelan could have put together. The exhibition closes on January 22 with the pay-what-you-wish panel discussion “The Last Word,” in which approximately twenty artists from a multitude of disciplines, including writers, comedians, philosophers, filmmakers, and many others, will gather together to talk about Cattelan’s impending career shift from 6:00 pm through 1:00 am. In addition, Cattelan will be at the Guggenheim on January 9 at 6:00 to sign copies of the exhibition catalog and celebrate the release of the new issue of Toilet Paper, with the museum remaining open until 7:45 and the store until 8:15 that night.

SKIN FRUIT

Kiki Smith’s “Bowed Woman” tries to hide in the corner in shame for being part of Jeff Koons show at the New Museum (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SELECTIONS FROM THE DAKIS JOANNOU COLLECTION
New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday-Sunday through June 6
Admission: $12 (free Thursday nights 7:00 – 9:00)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

For “Skin Fruit,” the new multimedia exhibition at the New Museum, guest curator Jeff Koons rounds up many of the usual suspects — Matthew Barney, Charles Ray, Urs Fischer, Chris Ofili, Terence Koh, Cindy Sherman, Paul Chan, Takashi Murakami, Paul McCarthy, Kara Walker, Richard Prince, Franz West, and Jenny Holzer — but has chosen some of their uglier work, resulting in a monstrosity of a show. The sculptures, paintings, video, and performances were all selected from the collection of New Museum trustee Dakis Joannou. Of course, while it is possible that Koons didn’t really have that much to work with and that the show is more indicative of Joannou’s tastes than Koons’s, that doesn’t excuse this uninspired, crowded wreck, perhaps exemplified by John Bock’s first-floor installation, “Maltratierte Fregatte,” centering on a purposefully smashed bus, or even more by Kiki Smith’s “Mother/Child” sculpture in which a man is playing his own skin flute. There are a couple of excellent rooms, however, one designed by Robert Gober and the other pairing Maurizio Cattelan’s “All” white body bags with a woman singing “This is propaganda,” then telling visitors that it is by Tino Sehgal. “Skin Fruit” pales in comparison to the other current celebrity-curated show in town, “Size Does Matter,” the two-floor FLAG Art Foundation exhibit put together by basketball star Shaquille O’Neal. Coincidentally enough, Koons has included in “Skin Fruit” his own “One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank,” the first artwork acquired by Joannou and one that features a basketball suspended in a tank of water. (Koons has also curated the current Ed Paschke exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Ave., which runs through April 24; Koons worked as an assistant to the late Chicago painter, explaining, “Ed Paschke taught me what it meant to be a professional artist.”)

Friday, March 26 A Proposition by Rodney McMillian: 13 unrelated ideas, lecture, $8, 7:00

Saturday, March 27 A Proposition by Rodney McMillian: 13 unrelated ideas, guest speaker response at 12 noon, performance featuring McMillian, Tracie D. Morris, and Chicava HoneyChild at 3:00, $8

Thursday, April 1 Get Weird: Mick Barr + Infinite Body, $12, 7:00

Saturday, April 3 First Saturdays for Families — Skin Fruit: Why Trash It?, free, 10:00 am