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The Italian Maurizio Cattelan likes derision and sparking controversy by creating works intended to challenge the public. Trained independently, he began his career in the late 1980s. His works, which take shape from real-world objects and people, are the result of an irreverent operation against art and institutions. Cattelan opens his own New York gallery, the Wrong Gallery, a space where nothing is sold and which remains permanently closed. Cattelan creates works that always cause scandal and give rise to all kinds of interpretations, even calling into question religion and the sacred, such as La Nona Ora, a sculpture which represents a life-size wax effigy of the late pope. John Paul II struck down by a meteorite. His sculpture “LOVE” exhibited in Piazza Affari in Milan since 2010 provokes residents and calls into question the history of this financial square with a simple gesture (middle finger).
In January 2012, the Guggenheim Museum in New York presented a retrospective of his work over 21 years, entitled “Maurizio Cattelan: All”. In June 2010, he launched the biannual magazine Toiletpaper with photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari containing images full of humor and fantasy. Toiletpaper is now a brand that translates its kitsch images into decorative objects and clothing brands.
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Founded in 2010, Toiletpaper is an artists' magazine created and produced by the artist Maurizio Cattelan, a leading figure in international contemporary art recognized for his taste for humor and provocation, and the famous photographer and artistic director Pierpaolo Ferrari.
Halfway between a magazine and an art book, Toiletpaper is unique in its kind. Each issue, since the first in 2010, contains images intended to challenge and shock the viewer. Each photograph is studied and staged in order to bring to life confusing and disturbing images: this is done surprisingly without any trickery.
Toiletpaper is committed: the images it contains largely denounce today's consumer society governed by the importance devoted to appearance.
Partnering with brands but also museums, the original images shared by Toiletpaper are the subject of campaigns and exhibitions, such as in June 2014 on the entire facade of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
They have created an unparalleled capsule collection for Seletti, at once provocative, funny, absurd, deviant...
The plates, mugs, tablecloths and soap in this collection are decorated with surreal images taken from their magazines.
Perfectly manicured severed fingers, crunched soap, fish stuffed with precious stones, canary with a severed wing... Toiletpaper's dreamlike motifs tinged with black humor borrow from fashion and advertising, combining commercial photography and twisted visual narratives and surreal imagery.
The different pieces of the Toiletpaper collection are as many striking paintings, mixtures of disturbing normality and disturbing ambiguity, in which fear mixes with visual pleasure.
A work of art as such, the Toiletpaper collection questions, through the accessibility of its price and its wide distribution, the nature and limits of the contemporary art market.
A question that has always been at the center of Maurizio Cattelan's work...
