Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan (Padua, 1960) lives and works in New York, USA. He is one of the most popular as well as controversial artists on the contemporary art scene. Taking freely from the real world of people and objects, his works are an irreverent operation aimed at both art and institutions. His playful and provocative use of materials, objects, and gestures set in challenging contexts forces commentary and engagement. Cattelan first achieved notoriety on an international scale in New York with La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), a wax statue of Pope John Paul II hit by a meteorite, which was originally exhibited in 1999 at Kunsthalle Basel. Since 2010, L.O.V.E., a public art intervention permanently installed in Piazza Affari, Milan, triggered the reappropriation by citizens of a square otherwise forgotten. In that same year, Cattelan started a biannual, picture-based publication, TOILETPAPER, co-created with the photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. In 2011, he provoked a lively debate with an installation of two thousand stuffed pigeons, presented at the 54th Venice Biennale. That same year, Maurizio Cattelan was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, in which all his works were suspended from the ceiling.

From September 2016 and for one year long, in the same museum’s restroom, he replaced the toilet with a fully functional replica cast in 18-karat gold, making it available to the public. Later that year, he was invited to exhibit a selection of his most important works at the Monnaie de Paris, resulting in a retrospective titled after one of his works, Not Afraid of Love. In 2018 he curated The Artist Is Present at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, a group show born with the idea of questioning the most hallowed principles of art in the modern era: originality, intention and expression.
In late 2019, a solo exhibition of his major works, Victory is Not an Option, took place at at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire: on the night of the opening, America, the fully-functioning toilet made of 18-karat gold already exhibited at the Guggenheim, was stolen from the exhibition venue by unknown thefts. In December 2019, Cattelan’s new work, Comedian, a banana duct-taped to the gallery’s booth wall, debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach fair, stimulating debates and discussions among audiences of all types around the world about the nature and the value of art.
In 2021, a solo exhibition is dedicated to the artist at the Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milano (Italy), as well as a major exhibition entitled “The Last Judgment” at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (China).

Some of his most recent solo and group exhibitions include: SWCAC – Sea World Culture and Arts Center -, Shenzhen, China (2022); Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, Italy (2021);  Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Centre Pompidou, Metz, France; Luxembourg + Co, London, UK (2021); Massimo De Carlo, London, UK (2020); Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, United Kingdom (2019);  Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2018); Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2016); Foundation Beyeler, Switzerland (2013); Grand Palais, Paris, France; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany; Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy; Sheffield Cathedral, Sheffield, UK (2015); Center for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland (2012);  Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York (2011).