Now in its third edition, the initiative, the only one of its kind in Europe, is promoted by AMACI, the Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums, with the support of DARC – Direzione Generale per l’Architettura e l’Arte Contemporanee del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
Through Giornata del Contemporaneo, AMACI aims to involve and raise awareness of the role of the art of our time in the cultural, social and economic development of our country. This third edition acquired an unprecedented echo in terms of participation and attention from public opinion and the media, involving more than 60,000 visitors. The result was consistent with the growth of contemporary art enthusiasts in our country.
This year Maurizio Cattelan took up the invitation to create the guiding image of the event and brought a charge of irony and irreverence to this celebration designed for contemporary art and its audience, which enjoyed a busy calendar made up of events, exhibitions and conferences, demonstrating the dynamism, vivacity and cultural richness of our country.
According to tradition, AMACI added again social commitment to the cultural significance of the event, by associating Giornata del Contemporaneo with a good cause. In partnership with WWF Italy, AMACI has launched a message of social responsibility related to the environmental and climate emergencies afflicting our planet. A contemporary and urgent message entrusted precisely to the artists and cultural workers of our time: because the art of the present speaks to the present.
Once again this year, for the third consecutive edition, UniCredit Group has confirmed its partnership with the Day of the Contemporary. The large banking group, with EPOCA Insurance Broker and Flos Illuminazione, already supporting partners of the last edition, thus contributed to offer a map of today’s art, involving not only big cities but also smaller towns in an integrated system capable of engaging the public.
MAURIZIO CATTELAN
Maurizio Cattelan (Padua, 1960) lives and works in New York, USA. He is one of the most popular as well as controversial artists on the contemporary art scene. Taking freely from the real world of people and objects, his works are an irreverent operation aimed at both art and institutions. His playful and provocative use of materials, objects, and gestures set in challenging contexts forces commentary and engagement. Cattelan first achieved notoriety on an international scale in New York with La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), a wax statue of Pope John Paul II hit by a meteorite, which was originally exhibited in 1999 at Kunsthalle Basel. Since 2010, L.O.V.E., a public art intervention permanently installed in Piazza Affari, Milan, triggered the reappropriation by citizens of a square otherwise forgotten. In that same year, Cattelan started a biannual, picture-based publication, TOILETPAPER, co-created with the photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. In 2011, he provoked a lively debate with an installation of two thousand stuffed pigeons, presented at the 54th Venice Biennale. That same year, Maurizio Cattelan was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, in which all his works were suspended from the ceiling.
From September 2016 and for one year long, in the same museum’s restroom, he replaced the toilet with a fully functional replica cast in 18-karat gold, making it available to the public. Later that year, he was invited to exhibit a selection of his most important works at the Monnaie de Paris, resulting in a retrospective titled after one of his works, Not Afraid of Love. In 2018 he curated The Artist Is Present at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, a group show born with the idea of questioning the most hallowed principles of art in the modern era: originality, intention and expression.
In late 2019, a solo exhibition of his major works, Victory is Not an Option, took place at at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire: on the night of the opening, America, the fully-functioning toilet made of 18-karat gold already exhibited at the Guggenheim, was stolen from the exhibition venue by unknown thefts. In December 2019, Cattelan’s new work, Comedian, a banana duct-taped to the gallery’s booth wall, debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach fair, stimulating debates and discussions among audiences of all types around the world about the nature and the value of art.
In 2021, a solo exhibition is dedicated to the artist at the Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milano (Italy), as well as a major exhibition entitled “The Last Judgment” at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (China).
Some of his most recent solo and group exhibitions include: SWCAC – Sea World Culture and Arts Center -, Shenzhen, China (2022); Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, Italy (2021); Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Centre Pompidou, Metz, France; Luxembourg + Co, London, UK (2021); Massimo De Carlo, London, UK (2020); Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, United Kingdom (2019); Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2018); Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2016); Foundation Beyeler, Switzerland (2013); Grand Palais, Paris, France; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany; Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy; Sheffield Cathedral, Sheffield, UK (2015); Center for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland (2012); Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York (2011).
Promoted by
AMACI Associazione dei Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani
Supported by
DARC – Direzione per l’Arte e l’Architettura Contemporanee del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali
Official partner
Unicredit Group
Supporting partner
Flos
