Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan combines elements of surrealism, performance, and satire in his oeuvre, and he is often referred to as a prankster or provocateur. For the 40th Venice Biennale in 2001, Cattelan erected a larger-than-life replica of the iconic Hollywood sign over the largest city dump in Palermo, Sicily; it was the first time in its history that the Biennale allowed a work to be presented outside Venice.Hollywood engaged the entire city by casting ordinary citizens in the role of film extras. Cattelan has said of this piece: "I tried to overlap two opposite realities, Sicily and Hollywood: after all, images are just projections of desire, and I wanted to shade their boundaries. It might be a parody, but it's also a tribute.... There is something hypnotic in Hollywood: it's a sign that immediately speaks about obsessions, failures, and ambitions." This photograph of Cattelan's installation joins another work by the artist, Untitled (2001), a semi-operational miniature replica of an elevator acquired by LACMA in 2003.
