Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster, and tragic poet of our times, Maurizio Cattelan has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art. His source materials range widely, from popular culture, history, and organized religion to a meditation on the self that is at once humorous and profound. Working in a vein that can be described as hyperrealist, Cattelan creates unsettlingly veristic sculptures that reveal contradictions at the core of today’s society. While bold and irreverent, the work is also deadly serious in its scathing cultural critique.
Maurizio Cattelan: All brings together some 130 works -examples of virtually everything the artist has produced since 1989- and presents the works en masse, strung seemingly haphazardly from the oculus of the museum’s rotunda in a site-specific installation. An interactive, multimedia mobile app -the first the Guggenheim has ever produced- will offer both museum visitors and users off-site an enhanced experience of the exhibition that includes images, texts about the works, and video commentary by many of the artist’s key collaborators.
In addition to a fully illustrated catalogue, a new edition of Cattelan’s magazine Toilet Paper, featuring images conceived and photographed by Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, will be presented on the occasion of the exhibition.
