MAURIZIO CATTELAN

until Sunday August 15 2010
The Menil Collection
T : 713 525 9404
1515 Sul Ross Street
TX 77006 Houston
United States

Communications Director
Vance Muse
vmuse@menil.org
www.menil.org/

The exhibition at The Menil Collection, organized by Franklin Sirmans, curator of modern and contemporary art, will be the artist’s first solo show in Texas.
The exhibition will focus on recent large-scale works that premiered in Europe in 2007 and will feature sculptures that range in tone from the melancholic and politically contentious to the decidedly irreverent.

It will include the monumental and unsettling memento mori, Untitled, 2007, a suspended taxidermied horse with its head buried in the wall, and Ave Maria, 2007, a series of saluting arms that extend from the wall. The translated title “Hail Mary” remains intentionally ambiguous, much like the various cultural meanings conjured up by gestures of allegiance.
Cattelan will also realize additional works for the exhibition in response to site visits to The Menil Collection campus and the museum’s world-famous collection of Surrealist works. Significantly, these pieces will also mark the artist’s return to sculpture-based practice. For the last five years his work has largely centered on publishing and curating.