Art, a solo exhibition by Cattelan is on its way

From Pirelli HangarBicocca comes the personal exhibition of Maurizio Cattelan, the most internationally known Italian artist, entitled “Breath Ghosts Blind”. The exhibition will be open from 15 July 2021 to 20 February 2022. The exhibition project, conceived specifically for the spaces of the Milanese institution, will bring to the attention of the public, through a symbolic representation of the cycle of life, a vision of collective and personal history always poised between hope and failure, matter and spirit, truth and fiction.

The themes of the exhibition

Curated by Roberta Tenconi and Vicente Todolí, Maurizio Cattelan's solo exhibition combines a reconfiguration of a historical work with unpublished works that are presented for the first time in the spaces of the Navate di Pirelli HangarBicocca, transforming them into a monument out of time.

“Breath Ghosts Blind” develops in a sequence of distinct acts that address existential themes and concepts such as the fragility of life, memory and meaning of individual and community loss. The site-specific project of the exhibition in Pirelli HangarBicocca questions the current system of values, between symbolic references and images that belong to the collective imagination.

Through its practice and in the course of its thirty years of artistic career, Maurizio Cattelan (Padua, 1960) has staged actions that are often considered provocative and irreverent. His works emphasize the paradoxes of society and reflect on political and cultural scenarios with depth and insight. Making use of iconic images and a sharp visual language, his works often arouse heated debate fostering a sense of collective participation. In conceiving works starting from images that draw on moments, historical events, figures or symbols of contemporary society – sometimes evoked even in its most disturbing or traumatic aspects – the artist invites the viewer to change point of view and recognize the complexity and the ambiguity of reality.

A ten-year long project

The “Breath Ghosts Blind” exhibition represents the culmination of a project on which the artist has been working for some time and celebrates his return to Milan from a distance over ten years. In the city that has already been the protagonist of some of his most significant interventions – from Untitled (2004), the controversial installation in Piazza XXIV Maggio, to the monumental public sculpture LOVE (2010) – the exhibition is a continuation of Cattelan's visionary reflections on to the most disorienting aspects of everyday life.

His projects and monographic exhibitions have been presented in institutions of international importance, 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 Center 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); Nicola Trussardi Foundation, Milan, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Civic Gallery of Contemporary Art, Trento (2004); MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2003); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2002).

Cattelan has also taken part in important collective 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).

Finalist of the Guggenheim Hugo Boss Prize (2000), the artist received the Rome Quadrennial Award (2009), the Arnold -Bode Prize, Kassel (2005), the honorary degree in Sociology from the University of Trento (2004) and the title of honorary professor in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara (2018).

On the occasion of the “Breath Ghosts Blind” exhibition 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 together with a conversation between the artist and the curators Roberta Tenconi and Vicente Todolí. Furthermore, the monograph will collect a rich photographic documentation of the works installed, together with reflections on the themes raised in the exhibition through the eyes of philosophers, theologians and writers, including Arnon Grunberg, Andrea Pinotti and Timothy Verdon.

The space

Maurizio Cattelan's exhibition will be visible in the space of the Navate at the same time as that of Neïl Beloufa “Digital Mourning” extended until 9 January 2022 in the space of the Shed. Chen Zhen's exhibition “Short-circuits” will close to the public on June 6, 2021.

In addition to the exhibition activity, in the next months of 2021, Pirelli HangarBicocca will maintain its extensive program of dissemination activities , teaching, research, inclusion and training both in digital form and, when possible, in their own physical spaces.

The digital contents

All the in-depth contents of the exhibitions and cultural projects of Pirelli HangarBicocca are online on pirellihangarbicocca.org with the new digital proposal “Bubbles”.

The museum space, currently closed to the public, will reopen as soon as the anti-Covid regulations allow it.