Maurizio Cattelan

MAURIZIO CATTELAN (Padua, Italy, 1960).
"L.O.V.E.". 2015.
Concrete.
Seletti edition.
With stamp on the base.
Edition of 1800 copies.
1:28 scale reproduction of the sculpture installed in Piazza Affari, Milan.
In its original box.
Measurements: 40 x 18 x 18 cm.

Scale reproduction of "L.O.V.E.", one of Maurizio Cattelan's most recognizable public works, installed in 2010 in Piazza Affari, in front of the Milan Stock Exchange. The title responds to the acronym Libertà, Odio, Vendetta, Eternità, and condenses the provocative ambiguity characteristic of the Italian artist.

The sculpture is based on the iconography of the fascist salute, but subverts it by mutilating the hand, leaving only the middle finger erect. In this way, Cattelan transforms a gesture of power into an image of defiance, irony and symbolic violence, directed both towards Italian political memory and towards the financial world represented by the location of the original work.

Maurizio Cattelan is one of the most internationally renowned contemporary Italian artists. His work, marked by irony, provocation and the questioning of symbols of power, has been the subject of important solo exhibitions at institutions such as The Menil Collection in Houston, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art in Athens, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Tate Modern in London and the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. In 2006 he was co-curator of the 4th Berlin Biennale; in 2009 he received the Quadriennale Prize in Rome, and previously, in 2005, the Arnold-Bode Prize of the Kunstverein Kassel.