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As Maurizio Cattelan’s Novecento enters its 30th-anniversary year, the legendary sculpture becomes a limited edition for the first time.
Originally created in 1997, Novecento is a taxidermy horse suspended from the ceiling by a leather harness and metal cables. The sculpture was prominently featured in Cattelan’s seminal retrospective, Maurizio Cattelan: All, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2011-12. Named after the Italian word for the 20th century, the artwork invokes an era defined by extraordinary technological ambition and the devastation of two World Wars – setting the stage for the work’s power struggle between grandeur, power, audacity and death.
This edition has been designed to hang from the ceiling using an adjustable twine cord, stylistically based on the original artwork, installed via a metal bracket. Each sculpture is hand-painted, individually numbered and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity, with a hanging guide included for installation. This edition is paired with Not Afraid of Love, and part of a wider series of sculpture editions, including We Are the Revolution and La Nona Ora.
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)?
