DESTE’s Project Space on Hydra hosts the European premiere of Maurizio Cattelan’s WE, a new sculpture by the irreverent Italian artist. Continuing his infatuation with funerary iconography and the concept of the look-alike, Cattelan’s new work is a mysterious, double self-portrait which, when installed in the former slaughterhouse space, takes on an even more disturbing character. It is a deposition, an allegory of inaction – it is, after all, the first time the artist has portrayed himself in a passive role. With its diminutive scale, and installed as it is in the brutally simple architecture of a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of town, WE is a sculpture you visit like an old friend at a hospital, with that same sense of familiarity, embarrassment, and fear.
On the occasion of the show, DESTE launches the first issue of Toilet Paper, a magazine created by Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. Following in the wake of Cattelan’s cult publication Permanent Food, Toilet Paper is a new generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives, and surrealistic imaginary to create a series of powerful visual tableaux.
