Maurizio Cattelan: ALL

Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster, and tragic poet of our times, Italian-born Maurizio Cattelan has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art. This retrospective survey marks the first time that the entirety of Cattelan’s oeuvre will be assembled into a coherent exhibition narrative, with more than 130 works borrowed from private and public collections around the world, ranging from the late 1980s to the present.

Cattelan’s 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 and installations that reveal contradictions at the core of modern-day society. For this survey exhibition, Cattelan will create a dramatic site-specific installation in the Guggenheim rotunda designed to encapsulate his complete production to date.

First Image:Maurizio Cattelan, L.O.V.E., 2010. Carrara marble, figure: 470 x 220 x 72 cm; base: 630 x 470 x 470 cm. Installation view: Piazza Affari, Milan, September 25, 2010– . © Maurizio Cattelan. Photo: Zeno Zotti, courtesy the artist
Second image:Maurizio Cattelan, La Rivoluzione siamo noi (We are the Revolution), 2000. Polyester resin, wax, pigment, felt suit, and metal coat rack; figure: 123.8 x 35.6 x 43.2 cm; coat rack: 189.9 x 47 x 52.1 cm. Edition 3/3. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director's Council and Executive Committee Members 2000.116. Photo: David Heald © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation