At the Guggenheim Museum

I was recently in NYC and saw an unbelievable exhibition by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Hanging sculptures of recognizable figures from popular culture and history, creating a bold and irreverent installation. It is composed of 130 objects produced since 1989, presented all together, hung by the museum’s rotunda. While walking upwards, my impression is of a dark humorous tone to these strung figures, as if the sculptures were waiting to be executed. Death is certainly an undertone to his artwork and his disrespective gesture is a satirical critique to abuse of power and incongruities of society. Cattelan’s spectacle is both morbid and entertaining. Not only is this exhibition his whole career spectacularly suspended, it is also the end. He has announced his retirement from the art world.

The Maurizio Cattelan: All app is available for download here.

La Nona Ora (1999), sculpture of the Pope John Paul II hit by a meteorite

Par Peur de l’Amour, a sculpture of an elephant in a Ku Klux Klan uniform

Taxidermied donkey, dog, cat and rooster

Him (2001), a rendering of Adolf Hitler the size of a young boy, kneeling in a pose of supplication

Frank and Jamie (2002), 2 NYC police men are hung upside down, interpreted as a “visual parallel to the vulnerability that permeated the country at the wake of Sept 11”

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