Maurizio Cattelan brings his seasons to Bergamo

No bananas, this time Maurizio Cattelan It is serious. The 64 -year -old Paduan artist famous for his provocative works (like the famous Comediansa banana stuck with the scotch on the wall, sold in auction for over 6 million dollars), returns to exhibit in Italy with a public art project after 15 years. The last time – just to stay on the subject of provocation – had created the famous average finger (title: Love) in front of the Milan Stock Exchange, in Piazza Affari: now in Bergamo realizes a traveling exhibition In 4 stages and 5 works (two unpublished) and this of his Seasons (Seasons) will be visible Until 26 October. The exhibition is part of the project of Biennale delle Orobie – think like a mountaina conceived by Lorenzo Giusti (with artistic interventions not only in the city, but also at altitude and in some municipalities of the valleys: Here the complete program)

Does the new exhibition by Maurizio Cattelan deser? Decidedly. Because Cattelan is Cattelan, and it wouldn’t be Cattelan if he didn’t make himself talked about. Here, however, do not expect works-shocks (at least not so shock: we remember, in addition to the middle finger, that the artist had made, just twenty years ago and always in Milan, the “hanged children“To a tree and always his is the famous statue with Pope John Paul II on the ground hit by a meteorite).

With the age Maurizio Cattelan has become more meditativeperhaps less direct and certainly never banal.

Let’s try to imagine a tour in his new Bergamo exhibition: departure from the lower city, to Rotonda dei Mille (always busy) where it is better to arrive in the car, to turn around the monument a Garibaldi on whose shoulders Cattelan has modeled a sculpture of a girl with red shirt and light shorts. With one hand he clings to the leader, with the other Mima a gun with two fingers. The work is called OneOne, and, as often happens for Cattelan sculptures, opens to multiple readings: who is and what is that child on the statue of the hero of the Risorgimento? Are you making a small and innocent vandal act? Or is he just a child like many who, on his shoulder to his grandfather, play to shoot the imaginary enemies? A work that thinks about history (but who was really Giuseppe Garibaldi) and personal history, transforming the monument into an almost domestic iconography. It takes a few minutes to observe the sculpture: photographing it at best is not easy, considering the roads of machines. And maybe that’s right: a suggestion is enough.

Photo Lorenzo Palmieri

A few minutes by car, a quarter of an hour on foot In via San Tommaso you arrive in the former oratory of San Lupo: Here in a room not particularly large but very high, we find a large candid marble eagle. It is drained on the ground, with the wings explained, and resembles the designed image of the posters of the exhibition that are found almost everywhere in the city. Bonesbones, is the title. Here goes a little bit the visual reference exploited by Cattelan in the period (about two years) in which he attended more Bergamo to know the history of the city and its inhabitants. As the artist explained, the sculpture reinterprets a bronze eagle that in 1939 was commissioned by Dalmine (which at the time was the state steel mill) to decorate a monument that celebrated the speech held by Benito Mussolini In 1919 to the workers of the company on strike. Today historians agree in considering that moment the beginning of the so -called Fasci of combat (it is also talked about in the film Mfor example). After the fall of fascism, the eagle was removed and brought “to the mountains” a Castiglione della Presolana Where Dalmine had a summer colony, now abandoned, for the children of the employees. Now the sculpture is packed in a warehouse of the company and Maurizio Cattelan wanted- albeit making it fall- letting it come out of the cage (of ideology, we could perhaps say).

Photo Lorenzo Palmieri

Another 10 minutes on foot and here we are at the gamec, the Modern and contemporary art gallery (but next year it will open a whole new and much bigger location): here, on the first floorMaurizio Cattelan presents two other sculptures: No of 2021, resumes his well -known statue of Hitler on his knees only this time he has A paper bag on the head: the choice to cover the face that means? That it is too painful to look in the face of evil or that it is too dangerous to approach and discover that maybe it resembles us? Everything is disturbing, thanks to the Red Red Room where on a base there is a glass bottle with a brick inside. Empire It is the title of the work, which resumes the inscription impressed on the brick. What does the “message in the bottle” of Maurizio Cattelan mean? Should we be afraid of this “imperial brick” or is it a symbol of rebirth and construction?

Photo Lorenzo Palmieri

Now is the time to leave the city low, shoe a little and arrive, passing from the walls, in Upper city where Maurizio Cattelan occupied the great Capriate room of Palazzo della Ragione. Here we find November, a statue made in 2023 that reproduces a Homeless while peeing on (a pump mechanism brings out of the water marble body that creates a pool on the floor). Lying on the bench, vulnerable: resembles one of the many homeless people we cross in our cities. “It seemed right to bring some fragility to a place like this“, Cattelan said. Here, where in the past there was the court that administered justice, today there is a work of art that speaks to us of the injustices of the world.