Maurizio Cattelan hangs a stuffed crocodile at the Baptistery of Cremona

Maurizio Cattelan hangs a stuffed crocodile at the Baptistery of Cremona


Cattelan and his love for the art of wrong-footing has struck again. It's called «Ego», it's a large stuffed crocodile, it's not a new work (it was born in 2019) but the novelty lies in the chosen location: it has just been hung inside the Baptistery of Cremona and – obviously – it is discuss the whole city.

It is the signature of the Venetian artist at the first edition of Cremona Contemporanea Art Week», the art week which began on 26 May and runs until 4 June.

The intervention brings us back to the Wunderkammer of the seventeenth century, but it is also a tribute to the Sanctuary of the Graces of Curtatone where there is another real crocodile, stuffed, hanging from the ceiling. Ego is so called because for Maurizio Cattelan, the crocodile is a sort of self-portrait, the animal closest to his personality.

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It is a work that is closely related to "La nona ora", Pope John Paul II struck by the meteorite: Ego was in fact exhibited for the first time together with the very famous work in 2019, during Cattelan's personal exhibition at Blenheim Palace of Oxford (it was on that occasion that «America», another famous work by Cattelan, that of the golden toilet, was stolen). And the juxtaposition, according to the artist, could be read as a «visual association of two sacrifices».

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Taxidermy has always been central to Cattelan's practice: just think of «Novecento», the horse hanging from the ceiling, a permanent work visible in the Castello di Rivoli. It is a technique to stop time and a way to show, according to Cattelan, the way animals are perceived. «Crocodiles – explained the artist – have been protagonists of rituals, religions, magical beliefs, urban legends. They are creatures that both frighten and fascinate and have been deeply symbolic since the beginning of humanity. Now this strange creature can be seen by everyone, hanging inside the Cremona Baptistery. And, as per tradition for works by Cattelan, the whole city and art lovers who have come here from all over Italy are discussing.



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