Maurizio Cattelan returns to Milan with an exhibition on the cycle of life, featuring three major new works

Opening to the public from July 15, 2021 to February 20, 2022, is Breath Ghosts Blind, the solo exhibition of Maurizio Cattelan (Padua, 1960) scheduled at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, curated by Vicente Todolí and Roberta Tenconi. Cattelan, one of the world’s best-known Italian artists, is known for the provocative charge of his art, but also for being one of the world’s leading exponents ofrelational art and for having created iconic works that, through their pungent language, have come to the attention of the international public. His works are always able to provoke bitter and tight debates, fostering a sense of collective participation, while at the same time inviting the viewer to change point of view and acknowledge the complexity and ambiguity of reality.

For the solo exhibition Breath Ghosts Blind, Cattelan conceived an exhibition project specifically for the spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca, offering a vision of collective and personal history through a symbolic representation of the cycle of life. In combining new works with the reconfiguration of a historical work, the exhibition unfolds in a sequence of three distinct acts that address existential themes and concepts such as the fragility of life, memory, and the sense of individual and communal loss. The unprecedented site-specific project will question the current value system amid symbolic references and images that belong to the collective imagination. The project is therefore conceived as a narrative in chapters that unfolds in the spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca, symbolically representing the cycle of life from creation to death. The title of the exhibition brings together the three works on display, starting with the new sculpture Breath (2021), which is placed in the Piazza of Pirelli HangarBicocca, passing through the reconfiguration of the historic intervention with pigeons for the 1997 Venice Biennale, now presented under the title Ghosts (2021), arranged in the Naves, to the monumental installation produced for the occasion and entitled Blind (2021), for which the Cube is instead reserved. The idea is to create an immersive experience through the most emotional and meaningful aspects of human existence, rendered through opposing feelings such as pain and love.

“Maurizio Cattelan’s work,” explains Vicente Todolí, artistic director of Pirelli HangarBicocca and co-curator of the exhibition, “transforms a story or a feeling into a visual and spatial experience. For the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca, the artist has turned the entire architecture of the museum into a psychological dimension: in tune with the sequence and nature of the three exhibition spaces (the Piazza, the Naves, and the Cube), the works are presented like the chapters of a film or the acts of a play, becoming a unicum.”

"’Breath Ghosts Blind’ addresses existential issues that touch each of us, the cycle of life from birth to death,“ says Roberta Tenconi, curator at Pirelli HangarBicocca and co-curator of the exhibition. ”These are Maurizio Cattelan’s obsessions; his works are antennae synchronized with the world, capable of catalyzing our exeprience of history, even when it comes to dramatic events."

“Art deals with the same themes from the beginning of human history: creation, life, death,” Maurizio Cattelan explains. “The themes are intertwined with every artist’s ambition to become immortal through their work. Every artist must confront both sides of the coin: a sense of omnipotence and failure. It is an up and down of heady heights and impervious descents. As painful as it may be, the second part is also the most important. Like all those that have preceded it, this exhibition is a concentration of all these elements.”

Cattelan’s works, projects and exhibitions have been presented in institutions of international significance, including Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire (2019); Monnaie de Paris (2016); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016 and 2011); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel (2013); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2012); Palazzo Reale, Milan, The Menil Collection, Houston, Deste Foundation Project Space, Hydra (2010); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2008); MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2007); Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento (2004); MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2003); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2002). Maurizio Cattelan has also participated in major group exhibitions, including Yokohama Triennale (2017 and 2001); Venice Biennale (2011, 2009, 2003, 2001, 1999, 1997 and 1993); Gwangju Biennale (2010); Biennale of Sydney (2008); Whitney Biennial, New York, Seville Biennial (2004); Biennale de Lyon (2003), Skulptur Projekte Münster (1997). A finalist for the Guggenheim Hugo Boss Prize (2000), the artist has received the Quadriennale di Roma Prize (2009), the Arnold-Bode Prize, Kassel (2005), an honorary degree in Sociology from the University of Trento (2004), and the title of Honorary Professor of Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara (2018).

Finally, on the occasion of the exhibition Breath Ghosts Blind in Pirelli HangarBicocca, a publication will be produced with Marsilio Editori that includes critical contributions by Francesco Bonami and Nancy Spector on Cattelan’s practice along with a conversation between the artist and curators Roberta Tenconi and Vicente Todolí. In addition, the monograph will gather rich photographic documentation of the installed works, along with reflections on the issues raised in the exhibition through the eyes of philosophers, theologians and writers, including Arnon Grunberg, Andrea Pinotti and Timothy Verdon.

Maurizio Cattelan returns to Milan with an exhibition on the cycle of life, featuring three major new works

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