“New ancestral images”: Nicola Ricciardi interviews Maurizio Cattelan

Nicola Ricciardi: Thinking back to “All” (2011), your retrospective at the Guggenheim – which in addition to collecting almost all of your works was accompanied by the affirmation that it would be your last exhibition – the words of Steve Martin come to mind. In 1981, after he had broken all public records over the previous three years, the comedian declared that he would never do standup comedy again because “It’s like painting the same blank canvas over and over and over and over and over. Once the concept is known, you don’t need to see two.” Steve Martin – who has since been a writer, actor, director, banjo player – has been true to his promise for 35 years, only to return to the stage in 2016. If we’re here to talk about your show at Pirelli HangarBicocca it’s because your self-imposed early retirement lasted a little less: what made you retrace your steps? And did you really believe that New York would be your last solo show?

For “All” you had assembled practically everything you had produced from 1989 up until then, filling the oculus of the Guggenheim rotunda to the bitter end. Today, in “Breath Ghosts Blind”, you present exclusively three works in a space that on the contrary appears almost completely empty – at least at first glance. How has your relationship with the exhibition space changed over the past ten years? “Less is more” – in the words of Mies van der Rohe?

“Breath Ghosts Blind” is presented as “a three-act dramaturgy”. However, even more so than being at the theatre, I had the impression of being at the cinema. The works – illuminated by impeccable lights – appeared to me like scenes from a film (one example above all: Hitchook’s Birds). The same booklet accompanying the exhibition speaks of dark atmospheres reminiscent of the streets of the Ghotam City imagined by Tim Burton. Are you planning any forays into the world of cinema?

If this exhibition were a film it would be a black and white film. Another peculiar aspect of the Pirelli HangarBicocca project is the restricted colour palette. We go from the immaculate white of “Breath” to the total black of “Blind” passing only through the hundreds of shades of grey of “Ghosts”. Not what one would expect from a Maurizio Cattelan exhibition (or film) – at least when compared to the work of the last ten years for Toilet Paper. Are you bored of colour?

Right. It could then be added that, in addition to black and white, it is also a silent film – or at least very silent, almost mystical-religious. In part I think it contributes to the fact that you arrive at your exhibition after passing through that of Neïl Beloufa, which certainly cannot be defined as laconic or austere. If you had to choose a soundtrack to accompany “Breath Ghosts Blind” what music would you choose?

Let’s talk about the individual works. “Breath” is the sum of many recurring elements that have always crossed through your research: there is the reference to marble and classical sculpture, identification (is the man lying down you? Does he just resemble you? Does it matter?), the animal presence …current affairs permeate throughout the exhibiton, for example, the community of homeless people that swelled to excess during the pandemic (the media, even in Italy, put great emphasis on the case of Venice Beach). How much does the present moment play a role – or how much, on the contrary, does it aspire to be timeless and universal?

“Ghosts” is the third version of a piece that was already presented in 1997 (“Tourists”) and in 2011 (“Others”) in the corresponding Venice Biennales. However, this new representation could not be more of a contrast: if the Venetian pigeons – which appeared in full display and in contrast with works by other artists – could not help but steal a smile (even if only for the false promise to leave their excrements on the public of the Biennale), their Milanese cousins emerge from the shadows as menacing, hostile, ready to transform the aisles of Pirelli HangarBicocca Alfred Hitchcock’s Bodega Bay. It probably also affects the fact that we live in times when the pigeon is no longer seen only as a funny animal, but also potentially as a carrier of disease – a subject to which we are all inevitably more sensitive. Is this change of register and name (the tourists who have become ghosts) a reflection of the changing times? Or is it rather attributable to the change in the exhibition context?

Everything moves, everything changes and nothing is ever the same just because the eyes of the beholder have changed. The title is not necessarily in tune with what we see – sometimes, however, it is able to make the image visible, to make it hold more truth. If we accept the basic idea that an image should be “looked at” and not “read”, we should, by observing it, be able to recover all the information we need. But not only the art of the twentieth century, even the same classical painting of biblical myths and fables has taught us that this is not true. The title orientates our vision, delimits the horizon of the gaze, it is never an easy matter. I constantly wonder what might be capable of generating the right short circuit in the viewer – and this time “Ghosts” was the trigger.

Let’s talk now about “Blind”. The reference to the Twin Towers is quite explicit. When Eric Fischl presented his Tumbling Woman at Rockefeller Center in September 2002, in clear reference to the terrorist attack the year before, it wasn’t even a week before the work was covered up and then removed because it was deemed too emotionally charged – and, above all, “too soon”. In 2011, The New York Times ran a lengthy article claiming that in the United States, over ten years, there had been no truly revolutionary or ambitious cultural feats in response to 9/11 – as had been, for example, “Apocalypse Now”, in relation to the Vietnam War. Twenty years on (and over six thousand kilometres away) do you believe that art is now free to tackle that theme?

One of the cultural works that best translated post-9/11 anxiety is “Bleeding Edge” by Thomas Pynchon, a book that Jonatham Lethem has defined as “poetry of paranoia”. Personally I think it is a fitting definition also for “Breath Ghosts Blind”. If the paranoia is clearly visible – as an example, the thousand pigeon eyes staring at the viewer suffice – the poem is more hidden, but sensibly present in your exhibition (it is no coincidence that the review by il manifesto begins with the words “Poetically Unexpected”). I also read that you wanted to include the lines of a Syrian Kurdish poet, Golan Haji, in the exhibition catalogue. Can you tell me more about him and the choice to include him in your project?

Last question. Death has always been a recurring theme in your artistic production, but in “Breath Ghosts Blind” it seems to emerge with even more force – partly because it is not counterbalanced by a playful moment, by a liberating laugh, as often happens in your work. It is also a not very Instagram-friendly exhibition, difficult to capture in images due to the marked physical and experiential component. For these two reasons I have heard many colleagues speak of “a serious exhibition”, of “a mature Cattelan”. Are they right? If we then consider that we live in difficult times, do you think that a certain degree of seriousness is appropriate or necessary today? Or that, on the contrary, and again to quote Steve Martin, an artist has the right if not the duty “to be absurd in a very serious time?”