MAURIZIO CATTELAN: SUNDAY
Gagosian is pleased to present the opening of Sunday by the artist Maurizio Cattelan. Cattelan’s new project, which is on view at the gallery’s 522 West 21st Street location, once again challenges the contradictions of American society and culture, and touches on sensitive issues faced by the world at large.
April 30 - June 15, 2024
In a new installation, Sunday (2024), Cattelan compounds the response to economic inequality embodied by America (2016), using precious metal to deconstruct the country’s relationship to the accessibility of weapons (a condition against which privilege affords no defense). Panels of stainless steel, plated in 24-karat gold, have been “modified” by gunfire.
Visitors to Gagosian’s 21st Street location are immediately confronted by a towering, 17-foot-tall wall of the gilded panels that stretches some 68 feet wide. In front of it is November (2024), a marble fountain that portrays a slouching figure urinating on the ground. Cattelan characterizes the work as “a monument to marginality,” an image of a reality that we habitually ignore.
Cattelan traces the opulent composition of both new works back to the Catholic spiritual tradition in which he was raised, also pointing out that the ease of melting down and reusing gold gives the material a fungible, unfixed nature that allows it to effectively disappear. Even when dealing with such sensitive subjects, however, he remains a “Sunday” artist at heart, avoiding explicit judgment in favor of presenting reality as he observes it.
Born in Padua, Italy, in 1960, Cattelan is one of the most provocative figures in the art world. Often dismissed as a prankster, he is a deeply political artist whose work investigates issues that affect us all. In Sunday, Cattelan affirms his ability to address art history and current affairs simultaneously, presenting them as two parallel but paradoxically convergent tracks.
Cattelan is, in the words of the exhibition’s curator Francesco Bonami, “the most famous Italian artist since Caravaggio.” While the claim may seem overblown, the popularity of the artist’s recent exhibitions at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, and the Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, confirm his ability to engage both art-world audiences and a global public.
Cattelan’s exhibition The Third Hand is on view at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, until January 12, 2025. His work is also on view in With My Eyes, the Vatican’s exhibition for the Holy See Pavilion at the 60th Biennale di Venezia, through November 24, 2024