Maurizio Cattelan: Breath Ghosts Blind

Pirelli HangarBicocca presents the solo show by Maurizio Cattelan Breath Ghosts Blind, a unique site-specific project, running from July 15, 2021 to February 20, 2022.

Curated by Roberta Tenconi and Vicente Todolí, the exhibition symbolically represents the cycle of life and gives the audience an insight into collective and personal history, always poised between hope and failure, matter and spirit, truth and fiction.

Over his 30-year-long career, Maurizio Cattelan (b. Padua, 1960), one of the most influential artists of his generation, has staged actions that are often considered provocative and irreverent. His works highlight the paradoxes of society and reflect on political and cultural scenarios with great depth and insight. By using iconic images and a caustic visual language, his works spark heated public debate, fostering a sense of collective participation. Conceiving artworks inspired by images that draw on historical events, figures or symbols of contemporary society—sometimes recalled even in its most disturbing and traumatizing sides—the artist invites the viewer to change perspective and to acknowledge the complexity and ambiguity of reality.

Specially conceived for the spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca, Breath Ghosts Blind brings together a revised configuration of a historical piece with new artworks for the first time presented in the Navate area, transforming it into a monument beyond time. The solo show unfolds in a series of acts dealing with existential concepts such as the fragility of life, memory, the individual and collective sense of loss. Amongst symbolic references and images that belong to our collective imagery, the unique site-specific project challenges the current system of values.

Breath Ghosts Blind is the culmination of a project the artist has been working on for a long time and it celebrates his return to Milan after more than ten years. Taking place in the city that has already been home to several of his most significant interventions—from Untitled (2004), the debated installation in Piazza XXIV Maggio, to the monumental public sculpture L.O.V.E (2010)—the show pursues Cattelan’s visionary reflections towards the most disorienting aspects of everyday life.

The catalog
The exhibition will be accompanied by a monographic publication encompassing critical essays 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. Alongside a rich photographic documentation of the exhibited artworks, the volume will also include reflections on themes that emerge in the show through the gaze of philosophers, theologians and writers such as Arnon Grunberg, Andrea Pinotti and Timothy Verdon.

The exhibition program
The exhibition is part of the program devised by Artistic Director Vicente Todolí together with the curatorial department: Roberta Tenconi, Curator; Lucia Aspesi, Assistant Curator; and Fiammetta Griccioli, Assistant Curator. Concurrently, the exhibition Digital Mourning by Neïl Beloufa, on view in the Shed space, is now extended until January 9, 2022.