Breath Ghosts Blind” has been conceived as a dramaturgy in three moments that unfolds in close relationship with the architecture of Pirelli HangarBicocca. The three acts find their counterparts in the monumental, adjacent spaces of the Piazza, the Navate, and the Cubo. Following one another, they articulate the exhibition layout like film frames or the acts of a theater performance.

Marking Cattelan’s return to Milan after more than a decade, the exhibition presents a project the artist has been working on for a long time. The title encloses the names of the pieces on display: Breath (2021), a previously unseen marble sculpture that opens the exhibition; Ghosts (2021), a reconfiguration of an earlier work that transforms the space of the Navate; and Blind (2021), a new monumental installation. The three artworks appear as moments of a symbolic representation of the cycle of life from birth to death, through emblematic references belonging to the collective imagination that call into question the current system of values and offer a deep reflection on the more disorienting aspects of daily life.

Following an ascensional path, the exhibition unfolds like a rarefied and silent setting in which the visitors’ bodies become an integral part of the artist’s narrative. Developed as a trilogy, it is also open to an allegorical interpretation, since the symbolism of the number three represents both the idea of unity and perfection, while also suggesting religious images, such as the Trinity or the Crucifixion.

1. Breath, 2021

Maurizio Cattelan, Breath, 2021, Carrara marble, Human figure: 40 x 78 x 131 cm, Dog: 30 x 65 x 40 cm, Courtesy the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo by Beatrice Curti

The sculpture that opens the exhibition in the Piazza at Pirelli HangarBicocca hints at a silent dialogue. Created with a noble material—white Carrara marble—, the work depicts a human figure and a dog lying on the ground on one side, facing one another. Apparently unconscious, the person is in a fetal position. The posture of the bodies suggests a possible link between the two. However, the artist leaves the nature of this relationship uncertain: the viewer does not know whether this situation is the outcome of an accidental or preexisting encounter.

While the scene might be the result of a fortuitous event or of a circumstance that occurred shortly beforehand, the use of marble conveys a sense of sacredness and timelessness. Distinguished by its fine grain, Carrara marble is the quintessential material in ancient, Renaissance, and Neoclassical sculpture, used by Michelangelo, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Antonio Canova, among many others. Cattelan has used it in a number of works, such as ironic gravestones for dogs like Piumino and Sparky (1999), that celebrate the memory of a pet through the solemn nature of the material, and the monument to the Italian politician Bettino Craxi (Untitled, 2010), a direct reference to classical statuary.

The human figure in Breath might recall a homeless person who lives on the side of the street and on the fringes of society, whether by obligation or choice, a subject that Cattelan has investigated since the second half of the 1990s, like in the mannequin made of rags of Andreas e Mattia (1996). The fact that the face of none of these figures is visible and that Cattelan often portrays himself in his works make the interpretation of these characters even more ambiguous and a possible projection of the artist. 

The simulation of animal life is a recurrent element in Cattelan’s practice and often evokes the idea and inevitability of death. In Love Saves Life (1995) Gérard, 1999 Plastic, clothing, shoes, blanket 82 x 66 x 87 cm Photo Attilio Maranzano 11 taxidermied donkey, dog, cat, and rooster are placed on top of one another—in reference to the Grimm’s fairy tale on friendship, The Town Musicians of Bremen, a motif the artist repeats two years later in Love Lasts Forever, replacing the animals with their skeletons to indicate an indissoluble bond. Or in Untitled (2007), featuring a chick among two Labradors in an empty space, a composition that references the Nativity scene.

The symbolism associated with the dog has a central role among many cultures around the world, not only for their well-known loyalty to humans but also, in mythology, as guides between the world of the living and that of the dead. For this reason, the animal is often associated with a twofold meaning: familiar-unknown, human-bestial, rationality-unconscious. 

The symbolism associated with the dog has a central role among many cultures around the world, not only for their well-known loyalty to humans but also, in mythology, as guides between the world of the living and that of the dead. For this reason, the animal is often associated with a twofold meaning: familiar-unknown, human-bestial, rationality-unconscious. and otherness, irony and sorrow represent apparent contradictions of a complex reality.

2. Ghosts, 2021

Maurizio Cattelan, Ghosts, 2021, Pigeons in taxidermy, Environmental dimensions, Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio.

Thousands of taxidermied pigeons are scattered along the Navate individually or in groups, arranged on the rafters that support the roof or dispersed in the gaps between the pillars and walls of the building. They “observe” from above the movements of the visitors looking at them. Impassive and eerily calm onlookers, pigeons are a habitual feature of the urban landscape and their presence in the exhibition space imparts a feeling of restlessness. Far from the visitors, the birds seem to loiter in the nooks and most anonymous places of the formerly industrial architecture of Pirelli HangarBicocca; suggesting a reversal between the inside and outside, they mark the confines of the museum and transform it into an urban environment that abounds with life.

The concept of overturning was already present in the first version of this work, which dates back to Maurizio Cattelan’s participation in the Italian Pavilion curated by Germano Celant at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997. For the installation—titled Tourists (1997)—the artist populated the pavilion of pigeons, set out on the air ducts and other architectural elements, along with their excrements, thus creating a feeling of disorientation. In 2011, for the 54th Venice Biennale, curated by Bice Curiger, he produced a new iteration of the installation—Others—, positioning around two thousand pigeons on the façade and inside of the Central Pavilion in the Giardini (formerly known as the Italian Pavilion).

Ever since the first version of the work, the presence of the birds in the rooms and exhibition spaces has stimulated a dialogue and a comparison with the other works shown, suggesting an analogy with the figure of the intruder in the art world linked to Cattelan himself. A variety of strategies are used to attest his alleged dissociation from the facts, contexts or actions that seem to mock and at the same time nourish the paradox of art. While the role of the artist is traditionally characterized by an aura of sacrality associated with the creative gesture, in his own work it is placed alongside that of the robber. In Another Fucking Readymade of 1996, for example, Cattelan legitimized an art heist, passing from a purely metaphorical to a literal level of robbery.

Cattelan ascribes the concepts of transmission and transit to the meaning of the pigeon, which was Others, 2011 Taxidermied pigeons Environmental dimensions Installation view, 54th Venice Biennale, 2011 Photo Zeno Zotti 14 historically the bearer of information during wars or for transatlantic communications. Its image is also connected to that of the dove, a ubiquitous symbol in Christian iconography to represent the Holy Spirit. Traceable back to emblematic events in different eras and cults, the pigeon, therefore, embodies the notion of testimony.

Considered together, the pigeons also suggest an indistinct crowd, the colonizers of a space that they claim through the silent power of their presence, establishing a strong sense of community and belonging. Therefore, in a set of reversals the observers become the intruders in the room and are confronted with their own individuality. The distressing experience impressed by the work has, in its previous versions, been compared with the iconic final sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds, in which the cawing of crows and squawking of seagulls is replaced by the unreal silence of the flock of pigeons. The landscape of the Navate may evoke other Hollywood images, among which the dismal atmospheres of the streets of Tim Burton’s Gotham City, suggesting scenes of the margins of society.

Lastly, the title Ghosts, seems to refer to a process of disembodiment that is intrinsic to the work’s exhibition history. Whereas with Tourists the relationship with the city of Venice and travel has a direct connection with the human figure, in Others Maurizio Cattelan dwells on the sense of community, evoking the relationship between identity and otherness. In contrast, Ghosts unveils a strong link with spectrality, conjuring up indistinct images of possible predecessors who inhabited that space. By expanding the perception of the architectural volume, Ghosts appears suspended in a limbo between the other two works on show.

3. Blind, 2021

This monumental new work is presented to the public for the first time on the occasion of “Breath, Ghosts, Blind”. Installed in the Cubo, Blind gradually reveals itself as a monolith from the Navate area—as visitors approach and cross the threshold of the space, it unveils the outline of an airplane intersecting it at its top, both elements made from resin and in matte black color. Seen from below, the imposing installation induces the feeling of being overwhelmed and dominated. The sentiment of vulnerability and fragility prompted by the sculpture recalls the awe or amazement that one may feel when passing in front of religious buildings like cathedrals and minarets. The correlation with an experience of a spiritual and solemn nature is heightened by both the shape of the work—a cross when seen in plan view—and the silence that pervades the exhibition space.

Blind inevitably alludes to the attack of September 11, 2001, and offers a synthesis of it, a single tower, as if the plane had become one entity with the building. Developed over several years, the work resumes and amplifies some of the key themes in Cattelan’s practice. First and foremost, a reflection on historical events, including terrorist attacks, which he has already addressed in Untitled (1994), Lullaby (1994), and Now (2004), that refer respectively to the kidnapping and execution of the Italian politician Aldo Moro in 1978, to the Mafia attack on the PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan (1993), and the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas (1963). Blind also continues the artist’s exploration of death, which he often epitomizes with direct and iconic features, like in All (2007), made of nine marble sculptures representing the profiles of anonymous corpses each L.O.V.E., 2010 Carrara marble Figure: 470 x 220 x 72 cm Base: 630 x 470 x 470 cm Installation view, Piazza degli Affari, Milan, 2010 Photo Zeno Zotti 17 covered with a sheet. From this perspective, Blind appears as a gigantic headstone, a memorial to the fallen. Similar to L.O.V.E. (2010), installed in the middle of Piazza degli Affari in Milan, it calls into question the value and significance of a monument: while the two works convey the idea of monumentality on account of their size, they also undermine it by creating a tension between conflicting forces and symbols.

With Blind, Cattelan crystallizes a moment that in just a few minutes caused the physical and symbolic collapse of an icon of New York City that had attracted the attention of other artists since its construction, such as high-wire walker Philippe Petit that in 1974 walked on a steel cable between the Twin Towers, suspended in the void. On this occasion as well, Cattelan appropriates once again a paradigmatic image by transforming it into a new symbol. In his intention, Blind goes beyond the events of that day: the episode and its resonance take material form in a work that becomes a memorial to a moment of shared pain and collective loss. Its plasticity may evoke other monuments to tragic historical events—such as the sculptural group of three public works of 1938 by Constantin Brancusi in Târgu Jiu in Romania, which pays tribute to the heroes of the First World War, and Peter Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, realized in 2005—but Cattelan proposes a different concept of memorial that unites abstraction and figuration. Finally, the title Blind also suggests another level of interpretation, insinuating doubt about exactly who it is that is unable to see, perhaps alluding to humanity in our current state.