Monday CULT dictionary: CODE :Maurizio Cattelan
maurizio cattelan 'untitled' (2009)
taxidermied horse, steel and felt-tip pen on wood, 55 x 201 x 189 cm
installation view photo: zeno zotti, courtesy maurizio cattelan's archive
Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960)Â
La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour)Â
wax, clothing, polyester resin with metallic powder, volcanic rock, carpet, glass
Cattelan started his career in ForlĂŹ (Italy) making wooden furniture in the 1980s where he came to know some designers like Ettore Sottsass.
He made a catalogue of his work which he sent to galleries. This promotion gave him an opening in design and contemporary art. He created a sculpture of an ostrich with its head buried in the ground, wore a costume of a figurine with a giant head of Picasso, and affixed a Milanese gallerist to a wall with tape. During this period, he also created the Oblomov Foundation.
Cattelanâs personal art practice has led to him gaining a reputation as an art sceneâs joker.[1] In 1995 he began his line of taxidermied horses, donkeys, mice and dogs; in 1999 he started making life-size wax effigies of various people, including himself.[2] One of his best known sculptures, âLa Nona Oraâ consists of an effigy of Pope John Paul II in full ceremonial dress being crushed by a meteor and is a good example of his typically humorous approach to work. Another of Cattelanâs quirks is his use of a âstand-inâ in media interviews equipped with a stock of evasive answers and non-sensical explanations.
Between 2005 and 2010 his work has largely centered on publishing and curating. Earlier projects in these fields have included the founding of âThe Wrong Galleryâ, a store window in New York City [1], in 2002 and its subsequent display within the collection of the Tate Modern from 2005 to 2007; collaborations on the publications Permanent Food, 1996â2007- with Dominique Gonzalez Foerster and Paola Manfrin- and the slightly satirical arts journal "Charley", 2002âpresent (the former an occasional journal comprising a pastiche of pages torn from other magazines, the latter a series on contemporary artists); and the curating of the Caribbean Biennial in 1999.[3] Along with long-term collaborators Ali Subotnick and Massimiliano Gioni, Cattelan also curated the 2006 Berlin Biennale. He frequently submitted articles to international publications such as Flash Art [2].
Cattelanâs art makes fun of various systems of order â be it social niceties or his regular digs at the art world â and he often utilises themes and motifs from art of the past and other cultural sectors in order to get his point across. Cattelan saw no reason why contemporary art should be excluded from the critical spotlight it shines on other areas of life and his work seeks to highlight the incongruous nature of the world and our interventions within it no matter where they may lie. His work was often based on simple puns or subverts clichĂ©d situations by, for example, substituting animals for people in sculptural tableaux. Frequently morbidly fascinating, Cattelanâs dark humour sets his work above the simple pleasures of well-made visual one-liners.