Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan (born 21 September 1960) is an Italian visual artist.

Known primarily for his hyperrealistic sculptures and installations, Cattelan's practice also includes curating and publishing.

His satirical approach to art has resulted in him being frequently labelled as a Joker or prankster of the art world.

Self-taught as an artist, Cattelan has exhibited internationally in museums and Biennials.

Cattelan was born on 21 September 1960 in Padua, Italy.

He was raised there by his mother, a cleaning lady, and his father, a truck driver.

In the project entitled 1968, A Toiletpaper collaboration between Maurizio Cattelan, Pierpaolo Ferrari and the Deste Foundation in Athens, Cattelan celebrates the works and time of Dakis Joannou and his collection of radical design.

Toilet Paper differs from the two previously magazine projects, as its photographs were planned and designated solely for the magazine.

The level of originality for this magazine surpassed the others, providing the audience vague, oddly familiar photographs to peruse through.

Toilet Paper is a surrealist pantomime of images that the viewer cannot easily trace back to a starting point, while they've most likely been conjured by popular culture.

It is a whirlwind of loud colors mixed in with the occasional black-and-white photo: "the pictures probe the unconscious, tapping into sublimated perversions and spasms of violence."

He started his career in the early 1980s by designing and producing wooden furniture in Forlì (Italy).

Cattelan has no formal training in art.

He has said that in addition to reading art catalogues, "making shows has been my school".

Humour and satire are at the core of Cattelan's work; this approach has often seen him labelled variously as an art scene Joker, jester or prankster.

He has been described by Jonathan P. Binstock, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art "as one of the great post-Duchampian artists and a smartass, too".

Discussing the topic of originality with ethnographer, Sarah Thornton, Cattelan explained, "Originality doesn't exist by itself. It is an evolution of what is produced. ... Originality is about your capacity to add."

His work was often based on simple puns or subverts clichéd situations by, for example, substituting animals for people in sculptural tableaux.

"Frequently morbidly fascinating, Cattelan's humour sets his work above the visual pleasure one-liners," wrote Carol Vogel of the New York Times.

Cattelan's first artwork has been noted as a photo art piece in 1989 entitled Lessico Familiare (Family Syntax), a framed self-portrait in which he is depicted forming a Hand Heart over his naked chest.

Cattelan is commonly noted for his use of taxidermy during the mid-1990s.

In 1992, Cattelan started the Oblomov Foundation (named after Ivan Goncharov's novel Oblomov and its idle main character) which raised ten thousand dollars to offer as a grant to an artist who would undertake not to make or show any work for one year.

Since there were no successful applicants, Cattelan used the money for a long holiday in New York.

Another work utilizing taxidermy is Bidibidobidiboo (1996), a miniature depiction of a squirrel slumped over its kitchen table, a handgun at its feet.

From 1996 to 2007, Cattelan collaborated with Dominique Gonzalez-Foster and Paola Manfrin on the publication Permanent Food, an occasional journal consisting of a pastiche of pages torn from other magazines and submissions by artists of similar material.

Novecento (1997) consists of the taxidermied body of a former racehorse named Tiramisu, which hangs by a harness in an elongated, drooping posture.

In 1999, he started making life-size wax effigies of various subjects, including himself.

One of his best known sculptures, La Nona Ora (1999), consists of an effigy of Pope John Paul II in full ceremonial costume being crushed by a meteor.

In 1999, he co-curated with Jens Hoffmann the 6th Caribbean Biennial.

In 2002, he co-founded with Ali Subotnick and Massimiliano Gioni "The Wrong Gallery", a glass door leading to a 2.5 square foot exhibition space at 516A½ West 20th street in New York City.

From 2002 he collaborated on the satirical arts journal Charley, a series on contemporary artists.

With long-term collaborators Subotnick and Gioni, Cattelan also curated the 2006 Berlin Biennale.

Articles by Cattelan frequently appear in international publications such as Flash Art.

After the building housing the gallery was sold, the door and gallery was put on display within the collection of the Tate Modern until 2009.

In 2009, Cattelan teamed up with Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari to create an editorial for W magazine's Art Issue.

In 2010, they founded the magazine Toiletpaper, a bi-annual, picture-based publication.

In 2011, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City presented a retrospective of his work.

Some of Cattelan's better-known works include America, consisting of a solid gold toilet; La Nona Ora, a sculpture depicting a fallen Pope who has been hit by a meteorite; and Comedian, a fresh banana duct-taped to a wall.

As part of a public art series at the High Line in 2012, Toiletpaper was commissioned with a billboard at the corner of 10th Avenue and West 18th Street in New York, showing an image of a woman's manicured and jeweled fingers, detached from their hands, emerging from a vibrant blue velvet background.

In 2014, Cattelan and Ferrari produced a fashion spread for the Spring Fashion issue of New York.