STORY-TRÅD·noje

Welcome to Maurizio Cattelan’s “Church” of Failure

SummaryItalian artist Maurizio Cattelan opens a new solo exhibition, 'Night,' at the Neue Nationalgalerie in BerlinOn through March 7, 2027, the exhibition is imagined as a "contemporary church" and features hyperrealistic sculptures exploring authority, religion, and mortalityA fire extinguisher might be the easiest piece in Maurizio Cattelan's new Berlin show to miss. But "Dust," perched at the entrance of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s modernist glass hall, is also the most significant. Inside are the ashes of the artist's friend.This is just the first piece of Night, now on view at Neue Nationalgalerie. For decades, Cattelan has held down quite the reputation as conceptual art's enfant terrible. His often provocative work unsettles our relationship to authority, value, and mortality, revealing humanity's weaknesses in the process. In his first major go-around at a German museum, the Italian artist skips the tongue-in-cheek pieces he's best known for — like the taped banana or solid-gold toilet, dubbed "America" — instead, bringing new commissions and works from the past 30 years that bend towards the sinister.To enter, visitors must pass through "Purgatory," a scaled-down Brandenburg Gate, confronting ambiguity and division that shapes the historic no-man's land. At the center, "Him" — Cattelan’s infamous miniaturized Hitler, kneeling in prayer — faces "Dawn," a crucified woman suspended in a transport crate.On the rafts above, in "People," thousands of taxidermied pigeons glare down on passersby below. Other animals nearby explore themes of exhaustion and labor: a dead horse hangs midair in "Novecento," while "Pentecost" similarly sees a donkey up high, struggling under the weight of an overloaded cart."Night is not simply the absence of light. It is a condition. The exhibition is not about darkness. It is about the loss of certainty," Cattelan wrote in a press release. "And while failure and despair seem to prevail for now, salvation, reflection, and imagination await on the other side. The space, after all, was imagined "like a contemporary church," fitting to both the architecture and the artist's own fraught relationship with Catholicism. "Night is also temporary," he continued, "it always contains the possibility of morning, even if you cannot see it yet."The exhibition is now on view in Berlin until March 7, 2027.Neue NationalgaleriePotsdamer Str. 50,10785 Berlin,GermanyClick here to view full gallery at Hypebeast