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The artist’s new exhibition at Gagosian in London is being teased with a cryptic poster campaign illustrating the burdens of modern life
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is no stranger to a headline-grabbing stunt. There are his hyperreal floating mannequins of Kendall Jenner and, earlier, model Stephanie Seymour; his solid gold toilet named America, for which two people were recently convicted of its theft from Blenheim Palace; and of course, Comedian – the infamous banana initially taped to a wall at Art Basel Miami – which recently fetched $5.2 million at auction.
Like them or not, Cattelan’s stunts are often framed as interrogations of power structures in the art world and society at large. This appears to be the underpinning of a new series of posters created by Cattelan, which are appearing around London’s Underground stations to tease his new exhibition at Gagosian’s Davies Street gallery in London, called Bones.
In them, the artist has reinterpreted five Greek mythological figures through a present-day lens by linking them to the current socioeconomic burdens on (most of) society.
In one artwork, an elegantly dressed woman stands in as a modern-day Sisyphus. Instead of forcing a boulder up a hill, she tirelessly pushes a shopping trolley filled with everyday groceries in a fairly explicit reference to the cost of living crisis.
In another, the celestial sphere held up by Atlas is reimagined as a person in a suit crushed under an immense weight – of life, it would appear. Elsewhere, Salmoneus is represented as another suited person, smoke billowing from their shirt collar, not because of Zeus’ lightning bolt but because they’re utterly burnt out.
Finally, Icarus provides the basis for a man hurtling towards his downfall, while the eagle that gorges eternally on Prometheus’ liver is represented as a foreboding raven perched on the back of a withered man.
The Greek mythological references correspond to the ancient art cues in the exhibition, namely a new white marble sculpture with horns called Notre Dame, which according to the gallery is endowed with “a mythic presence” and suggests an “unknown deity in fossilised form”. This will be joined by gold-plated panels bearing gunshot holes.
The gallery is also running a concurrent display of Cattelan’s work at Burlington Arcade and publishing a new edition of his semifictional ‘autobiography’ by Francesco Bonami.
Bones runs at Gagosian Davies Street from April 8–May 24; gagosian.com
