Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster, and tragic poet of our times, Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960 in Padova, Italy, lives in New York and Milan) has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art. His source materials range widely, from popular culture, history, and organized religion to a meditation on the self that is at once humorous and profound. Working in a vein that can be described as hyperrealist, Cattelan creates unsettlingly veristic sculptures that reveal contradictions at the core of today's society. While bold and irreverent, the work is also deadly serious in its scathing critique of authority and the abuse of power.
Maurizio Cattelan
is one of the leading
contemporary artist and his works are much desired collector's items that often reach
astronomically high prices at auction sales—although the artist is not dead yet.
He runs the artist's magazine
Permanent Food,
Charley and
Toilet Paper.
Artist, graphic designer, publisher, Federico Pepe (born 1976 in Omegna, Italy, lives and works in Milano) is a singular figure in the
Italian cultural and artistic landscape. He runs
Le Dictateur project, an editorial platform and independent exhibition space in Milan. He exhibited at
MoMA Library and Family Business, New York, Tate Modern, London,
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Triennale Milano... He collaborates regularly with artists such as
Maurizio Cattelan,
Pierpaolo Ferrari (
Toilet Paper),
Nico Vascellari,
Jacopo Benassi, etc.
Born 1976 in Porto Cesareo, Luigi Presicce lives and works between Porto Cesareo and Florence.
Cultural anthropology is the framework for the complex and eccentric installations of Nico Vascellari (born 1976 in Vittorio Veneto,
Italy, lives and works in Rome and Vittorio Veneto), which combine
performative and
sculptural elements with
drawings,
collages,
videos and
sonic extravaganzas. Folklore, nature and the alternative underground scene contribute to the artist's unusual analysis of contemporary visual culture. Vascellari, himself a singer in the
punk band With Love, operates using rebellious artistic gestures that originate in tribal rituals of an archaic world, on the threshold of expression and collective consciousness.
Being both
musician and artist, Nico Vascellari combines his sculptural installations with sound performances. Through his performances he investigates the relation between the viewer, the space and the action. He is drawn to cult figures connected to the music scene with whom he collaborates or to which he reacts in his work. Inspired by his fascination with
rituals,
spiritualism and cult, he reflects on the thought of destruction as a driving energy to the construction of things. This leads him into the idea of mapping spaces, energies, sounds and nature, all of which are central themes in his work.
