- Artist or Maker
- Maurizio Cattelan
Italy, Padua, active Italy, Milan, active United States, New York, born 1960 - Title
- Untitled
- Date Made
- 2001
- Medium
- Miniaturized elevator cabs with computer chips, working mechanical doors and lights
- Dimensions
- a) Elevator: 33 5/8 x 33 3/4 x 18 1/2 in. (85.41 x 85.73 x 46.99 cm); b-c) Door frame: 12 1/2 x 8 x 1 1/2 in. (31.75 x 20.32 x 3.81 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2003.5a-f
- Collecting Area
- Contemporary Art
- Curatorial Notes
Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960) is often referred to as a prankster or provocateur because of the disorienting nature of his works. In 1992 visitors to a gallery opening found the space empty and the artist gone; Cattelan had fled from the second story via a rope of knotted bedsheets. For his Projects show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1998, visitors entering the museum were greeted by an actor hired to wear an enormous papier-mâché Picasso head and his trademark striped shirt. One untitled work of Cattelan's from 2001 is a miniature replica of a commercial elevator that can be called by pressing tiny buttons. Every detail is carefully reproduced, from the steel handrails and fluorescent lighting inside the elevator to the lit numbers indicating movement from floor to floor; uncannily, the work suggests the monotony of a corporate environment. However, this tiny replica only appears to move. The absurdity of a minuscule elevator that goes nowhere is simultaneously whimsical and disquieting. It conjures up the world of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and leaves us wondering if we are huge or the elevator is tiny.
