A sculpture of an elephant draped in a white cloth, with grey legs and trunk, standing on a white pedestal.

Maurizio Cattelan

Not Afraid of Love

€1,500
Limited edition of 1000

Shipping between 26 Feb - 21 June

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Ten years after Not Afraid of Love marked Maurizio Cattelan’s triumphant return to the art world, the sculpture that gave the exhibition its name is editioned for the first time.

Originally created in 2000, Not Afraid of Love depicts a giant elephant concealed beneath a white sheet with two eye-holes. In 2016, the work lent its title to Cattelan’s major exhibition at the Monnaie de Paris, five years after he boldly announced his retirement from the art world following his 2011 retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Playing on the expression “elephant in the room”, the work turns an imposing creature into an absurd and vulnerable figure in hiding – a characteristically on-the-nose joke that, with disarming simplicity, opens onto a near-endless range of interpretations.

Each sculpture is hand-painted, individually numbered and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. This edition is paired with Novecento, and part of a wider series of sculpture editions, including We Are the Revolution and La Nona Ora

Maurizio Cattelan
Maurizio Cattelan6 collaborationsMaurizio Cattelan has been called many names, but do not call him an imposter – “an impostor is someone who wants to be someone else… I am who I’ve always been.” Maurizio, the troublemaker, grew up in an industrial town in northern Italy, faking his parents’ signatures on school report cards. Maurizio, the outsider,  received no formal art training but has been hailed ‘the most famous Italian artist since Caravaggio.’ Maurizio, the heretic who dropped a meteorite on the pope (La Nona Ora, 1999), holds no institution sacred – not even the art world. A century after Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), Maurizio inverted the idea of readymade art with America (2016) – a fully-functional solid gold toilet in the restrooms at Guggenheim Museum.

While Comedian (2019) – an ordinary banana duct-taped to a wall – has captured mainstream attention for years, it’s not the first time it seemed like Maurizio was playing a joke on the world. For example, L.O.V.E (2010), an 11m marble hand with four digits missing – leaving only a middle finger outside the Italian Stock Exchange in Milan. Is it a response to the fascist history of the square, or the 2008 financial crisis? Is it a postmodern comment on the emptiness of gestures, or just a really good joke? Any single answer would be unsatisfactory. To Maurizio, “if something can be reduced to one clear concept, it is as sure as hell artistically dead.” Only one thing unifies this sprawling, sardonic oeuvre – the figure of Maurizio the Artist. Or is that just another Mini-Me (1999)?

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Reviews from Avant collectors

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