Photo by Giorgio Perottino
Closing this week, “SHIT AND DIE”, curated by Maurizio Cattelan feels like walking through an afternoon’s worth of Tumblr blogs come to life. Centred around seven themes including “The Assembly Line of Dreams”, “In Event of Moon Disaster”, and “Dead Man Working”, the show is described as a “meticulous undertaking of appropriation”. Iconoclast, joker, and perfectionist, we talk to Cattelan about his work, his schizophrenic relationship to media and his dream of becoming a bank robber.
SLEEK: You once said that you wish you could take the best parts of someone else’s interview and use them as yours. Is there any past interview quote that you’d like to repeat here? If yes, what should my first question be?
Maurizio Cattelan: Come on. Don’t be so lazy, I’m not writing your first question for you!
Fair enough. “SHIT AND DIE” is a much-anticipated spectacle. Is it also a small hijacking of Turin’s art fair, Artissima?
Artissima offered an opportunity that we explored as much as possible. There is probably some sort of hijacking within the show: hijacking of some traditions, of some exhibition gimmicks, of some communication clichés that we were happy to play with to create an interesting light on the works on view. But we were independent enough from the fair not to interfere or maybe just to add a layer of content to an already exhaustive programme.
Not being a professional curator gave us more freedom: we didn’t care about any conventional rules and organised the show by following our guts. It was also very exciting to have a glance at the relationship between curator and artist from another perspective; it made us realise that control is quite an issue for all of us!
How much influence does art theory or theory in general have on your practice?
Someone once said that in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. Let’s say that I believe more in practice. We worked in a very intuitive manner to build the show, even if it ended up forging a very constructed and cohesive discourse in the end. Theory came after practice and stemmed from it. I’m not a person of concepts; I’d rather build images that are immediately recognisable and straightforward. For me, what you see is what you see, not what you need to read about.
If there’s no theory behind your work, do you see it as belonging to a particular movement?
I think this is a good question for theory lovers. I don’t like to define or talk about my work, I make it and it’s out there for people to build whatever discourse they want around it. Besides, I believe we are in a ’post-movement’ period; art practice is so scrappy these days that movements have lost their relevance.
Carlo Mollino, Senza, circa 1962–73. Courtesy Museo Casa Mollino
Do you collect artwork?
I collect emoticon stickers. Does that count?
Would you consider yourself an optimist, pessimist, or something else?
An incurable optimist, but it depends on the weather, really.
How do you feel about statements referring to you as a rebel, joker or iconoclast? Are you any of those?
A rebel without a cause, maybe. From my point of view, humour and irony are tragedy in disguise, they’re two sides of the same coin. Laughter is a Trojan horse entering into direct contact with the unconscious, striking the imagination and triggering visceral reactions. If humour in certain works was enough to pull anger, fear and amazement out of everyone, the psychoanalysts would be in disgrace – shame is not enough!
What are at the foundations of Toilet Paper, the magazine you publish? Which publications have inspired it?
We were inspired by no magazine in particular but by all in general: Toilet Paper is a visual object of only pictures that investigates our contemporary obsession with images. It results from the digestive process following an overdose of visual consumption. Aesthetically, one can mistake the content with commercial photography, as the magazine’s pop iconography creates attraction and manipulates our vision the way advertising does. But there is a twist: a Toilet Paper image has absolutely no superego; it explores in an apparently harmless way our most intimate, hidden, unspeakable desires and urges. Each picture in the magazine is carefully constructed within a specific mental environment. It is evaluated, judged, transformed until it reaches the Toilet Paper status, conveying a mix of unexpected disturbance and uncanny ambiguity, which could define the TP style – if such definition is possible.
Installation view of “Shit and Die” Photo by Zeno Zotti
Installation view of “Shit and Die” Photo by Zeno Zotti
Francesco Bonami once wrote an essay where he mentions that you “toyed with the idea of robbing a bank” in the late Seventies. Was this an exaggeration on the part of the writer or was this really a plan?
No exaggeration there, it’s a very complicated plan to which, between organising a show and shooting Toilet Paper, I am devoting my retirement years.
What were the Eighties and Nineties like for you?
The Eighties were a golden period: I could wear tie-dye spandex pants in the streets without feeling any judgment. The Nineties are the equivalent of a strong hangover for the world.
A question you asked Felix Gonzales Torres in 2007 – who is your public?
I have to learn to ask better questions!
What’s your relationship to the media of pop culture – music, technology, television, and so on?
Jonathan Horowitz’s work in the show features the song “Je t’aime … moi non plus” by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, which pretty much sums up my feelings about pop culture. It’s like the kind of schizophrenic relationship where you hate something so much you end up loving it; or the other way around. In any case, media is a pretty rich food for thought and a strong material to explore.
In 2011, you hinted at retiring. What happened to that idea?
Well, I did! But instead of cultivating a vegetable garden in the south of France I’m organising a show in the north of Italy! It’s retirement for ADD.
Aleksandra Waliszewska, Untitled. Courtesy the artist and LETO Gallery, Warsaw.
Interview by Alicia Reuter
Taken from Sleek 44, What Women Want. Read more from the issue or buy a copy.
“SHIT AND DIE” runs until January 11, 2015 at Palazzo Cavour in Turin, Italy
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