AP – The first thing that strikes you, arriving in the gallery that houses artist Maurizio Cattelan’s latest satirical work, is the gleam. The brilliant gleam of 64 panels coated with 24-carat gold – in all, a glittering wall 17 feet tall and 68 feet wide.
The second is the pockmarks on all that gold, created by more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition fired from six different weapons.
But the third impression is probably the most arresting: Up close, you can see yourself reflected in the gold. And when you take a selfie, as many viewers have been doing the last month, it looks like you yourself are riddled with bullet holes.
Wealth and luxury in America, pierced by the agony of gun violence. That’s the explanation most visitors take away from Cattelan’s solo show, the first in more than two decades by a conceptual artist famous for a series of similarly eyebrow-raising works. They include: A simple banana affixed to a wall with duct tape that stole the show at Art Basel in Miami (and drew so much attention it had to be removed); a functioning toilet made of gold (it was ultimately stolen); and an effigy of the pope being felled by a meteorite.
But ask Cattelan himself to define his new work, entitled Sunday, and the 63-year old Italian is adamant not to point a finger at America.
“We cannot be so specific,” he said in an interview, standing beside his work. “Actually it can be about any part of the world.”
Ask to critique the critiques, he replied impishly, “I believe in plurality. Whatever they say is fine”. The Gagosian gallery said the Cattelan show has been one of its most successful to date, with 14,000 visitors so far.
Most viewers said their key emotion seems to be one of contradiction – of beauty and violence juxtaposed, leaving them confused as to how to feel.
“It’s beautiful, but also there’s that sort of violence behind it, which is interesting because you’re not sure how to react to it,” said Brent Koskimaki, visiting from Calgary, Canada.
“Because the creation was quite a violent thing, right? But now it’s so still and quiet in here.”
He’s certainly correct that the creation was uniquely violent.
The artist supervised a session at a shooting range in Brooklyn, with professional armourers firing two semi-automatic pistols, two semi-automatic rifles and two 12-gauge shotguns. The 64 panels were made in Italy of stainless steel plated in gold, are three millimetres thick and weigh upwards of 80 pounds.
Cattelan notes the shooting session couldn’t have happened in Italy.
“Some of these weapons, they are only used by the army,” he said.
Still, he said, all the gun professionals he encountered in America have been ethical and professional, which seems to have surprised him. “They were not fanatics at all,” he said.
Adding to the flurry of contradictions is the accompanying fountain, sculpted from Carrara marble, that Cattelan has placed facing the pockmarked wall. Modelled on a late friend, it is a likeness of a man curled up on a bench, urinating – with water coming out of, well, the obvious place.
A friend of Koskimaki Veronique Black and his wife Teresa noted the sad portrayal of the man was a direct contrast to the beauteous gleam of the wall.
“To me, it’s beautiful and it’s attractive,” Black said of the wall. “So you want to get closer. You almost want to touch it. And then it’s a bit repulsive to see the man peeing. So you’re attracted to something violent and pushed away from something that’s humanity. We should help each other… but you go towards the gold”.
Added Teresa Koskimaki, “I guess that’s what society is really like! We’re attracted to something that’s beautiful. But we also turn away from what’s happening in society and the suffering of others.”
