FREE EXHIBITION Maurizio Cattelan <<WE>> in Seoul

FREE EXHIBITION Maurizio Cattelan <<WE>> in Seoul

2023.01.31 – 2023.07.16

 

 

 

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As the first exhibition of 2023, the Leeum Museum of Art will host <<WE>> by Maurizio Cattelan, known as the most controversial artist of this era.

This exhibition, which is the largest since the Guggenheim Retrospective in New York in 2011, consists of 38 works introduced from the 1990s, when Cattelan entered the art world, to the present.

Cattelan's works are simple to look at and immediately understandable, hyper-realistic sculptures and paintings, most of which stealthily appropriate art history or skillfully use familiar popular elements.

Packed with humorous and cynical anecdotes, his work makes us face the uncomfortable truth with a rude and shameless attitude and overturns the basis of our perception in an instant.

 

Cattelan rejects the role of the artist in preaching moral rationality or Enlightenment ideals.

He is not afraid to be called a trickster, a swindler, or a bad boy. He calls himself a clown and makes fun of himself.

Numerous Cattelans staring at us from all over the exhibition hall skillfully play intruders, policemen, priests, criminals, artists, and boys, inviting us to a pessimistic, melancholy, and cynical Cattelan version of human comedy.

And this provocative humorist uses the Chaplinian comedy device in just the right place to elicit a pitiful sympathy for the cruelty of life.

 

Although the title of this exhibition (WE) borrows the title of Cattelan's work, it raises questions about who we are, how we become ourselves, and what relationships are in an expanded sense rather than a direct reference to the work.

In Cattelan's work, thoughts about oppression, anxiety, authority, religion, love, me and my family, life and death, and what 'us' means to activate discussions and make some form of solidarity possible.

 

모두, 2007 이미지 : Courtesy of Maurizio Cattelan, Photo Kim Kyoungtae

우리, 2010 이미지: Courtesy of Maurizio Cattelan, Photo Kim Kyoungtae

아홉 번째 시간, 1999 이미지: Courtesy of Maurizio Cattelan, Photo Kim Kyoungtae

무제, 2001 이미지: Courtesy of Maurizio Cattelan, Photo Kim Kyoungtae

그, 2001 이미지: Courtesy of Maurizio Cattelan, Photo Kim Kyoungtae

비디비도비디부, 1996 설치전경: Italics. Arte italiana fra tradizione e rivoluzione 1968-2008, September 26, 2008 to March 22, 2009, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy. Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. Photo Zeno Zotti. Courtesy Maurizio Cattelan's Archive.