Culture

Maurizio Cattelan in Milan

In a series of interviews curated by myself, dedicated to a select group of national artists more than a decade ago, reference to the question on the role of provocation, the name of Maurizio Cattelan in the answers was spontaneous for his colleagues. Some denied it, others contested it, someone did not want to answer and others valued him on some researches, criticizing in different.
Among fellow artists there is often a sort of envy, or a willingness to not always be positive and pro-active, but without any doubt, Maurizio Cattelan’s research has always moved towards a subtle expressive line, capable of underlining multiple meanings and interpretations which each person, in front of his works, can explain and discover.
In the world of art, notoriously, this expressive genre has a short visual life, fueled when it is viewed and discussed between positivity / negativity.
Born in Padua (1960), along his thirty-year career, he goes beyond this classification because if in some works he finds this approach, in others he opens up to examinations rich in complexity and conceptuality.
Within this dual perspective, the best known Italian artist in the world returns to Milan with a solo exhibition at Pirelli Hangar Bicocca: “Breath Ghosts Blind”, from 15 July 2021 to 20 February 2022.
A site specific exhibition project in which contemporaneity will come and be put, artistically, into reflection. Figures, images, symbols, sculptures, installations will lead the visitor to define and interpret multiple visual languages created and conceived by Maurizio Cattelan.
Undoubtedly, now in advance to the opening, it’s possible to hypothesize pro, against or indifference discussions but, the media context of recent years has changed for better or for worse, inducing less extreme forms of evaluation in the art lovers, opening up to a probable and greater understanding, although the concept of visibility always arises from a polemical and provocative attitude, rather than constructive and dialoguing.
Therefore, a collective imagination will be nourished thanks to unpublished works (in the gallery below we display a selection of historical works) that will retrace visions, images, symbols within globalizing interpretations and languages in real, unreal and surreal abstractions over time but even outside of it.

by Alain Chivilò