{"data":{"id":"9300","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":9300,"topgoose_id":2532,"tms_id":9300,"display_name":"Maurizio Cattelan","sort_name":"Cattelan Maurizio","display_date":"1960–","begin_date":"1960","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eMaurizio Cattelan has been called a huckster, a prankster, and a firebrand. He began making art at the end of the 1980s, demonstrating a penchant for the performative and talent as an escape artist. (Short of ideas for an exhibition in the early 1990s, he hung a string of knotted sheets from the window of the gallery, the inside of which he left bare.) Since then, Cattelan has developed a body of work consisting mainly of lifelike sculpture, including waxworks and animals reconstructed by taxidermy, and large-scale installations blending social and institutional critique. Interspersed among these—and equally disturbing— are poignant scenarios alluding to themes of innocence and mortality. A quintessential “post-studio” artist, Cattelan produces work on an exhibition-by-exhibition basis, using each scheduled project as a catalyst for new work. As he has said: “I really just take advantage of the exhibition situation. Because I don’t have a studio, I use shows as a means to get work produced.”\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen invited to participate in the \u003ca href=\"/exhibitions/biennial-2004\"\u003eWhitney Museum’s 2004 Biennial\u003c/a\u003e, he proposed a piece that was eventually deemed too controversial to be included in the exhibition. He made \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/20822\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eUntitled\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e in response, using an existing work he created for a project in Kitakyushu, Japan—a sculpture from 2000 in which he depicted himself seated at a table with his head planted in a plate of spaghetti. Cattelan instructed that the piece be sealed in a box and buried in an undisclosed location inside the Whitney’s Marcel Breuer building. The work is now re-sited at the Whitney’s downtown location, where a wall label and accompanying engraving on a stone of the lobby floor are the only indications that it exists. This project—continuing his longstanding interest in institutional critique and public reception—is an implicit burial of his artistic voice beneath the Museum’s authority, something further underscored by the epitaph above, accompanying this text.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500116125","wikidata_id":"Q655398","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:26:47.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-30T07:03:48.066-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/9300/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/9300/exhibitions"}}}}