Who

Italian expat Cattelan is known for his subversive, satirical sculpture.

Backstory

A native of Padova, Italy, Cattelan was a nurse, cook, gardener, postman, and mortuary assistant before he finally got it right and turned to art. A 1991 solo show in Bologna, Italy, launched his career; since then his work, which touches on everything from politics to racism to terrorism to religion, has been the focus of shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1998, the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2000, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2003. He's represented in New York by Marian Goodman.

Of note

Cattelan's intensely irreverent and satirical style often stirs up controversy. His work "La Nona Ora," which depicted the Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite, upset many, as did a penitent, miniature Hitler. In 2004, in Milan, Cattelan tied nooses around three (very real looking) child puppets and hung them from Milan's oldest tree; an outraged 42 year-old man was rushed to the hospital after cracking his head while trying to dismantle the installation. Such publicity-attracting episodes help boost prices, of course—just days after the incident, one of artist's earlier pieces, "The Ballad of Trotsky," a suspended taxidermy horse, was sold by Peter Brant at Christie's for $2.1 million to LVMH president Bernard Arnault. Cattelan's work has been collected by Elaine Dannheisser and Charles Saatchi, as well as by museums including the Guggenheim and MOMA.

For the record

With pals Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick, Cattelan opened New York-based art gallery The Wrong Gallery, which sold absolutely nothing and was never open; it was simply a glass door that featured a sign by British artist Adam McEwen proclaiming, "Fuck Off We're Closed." It was evicted from its 1 square meter space in Chelsea in 2005. It's now in the Tate Modern in London. For the Berlin Biennial, the trio opened a fake Berlin outpost of Larry Gagosian's gallery.

No joke

Cattelan has been known to copy other artists' responses to interview questions, and send assistants and other imposters to talk to reporters in his place. (When he does show up, he usually has very little to say about his work.) Longtime collaborator Massimiliano Gioni posed as Cattelan at a lecture at the New School in 2002, and has done the same thing on European television.

Habitat

Cattelan lives in a rented one-bedroom apartment on East 12th Street, and works in a studio apartment in Greenwich Village.