Paul McCarthy in Milan

Massimiliano Gioni takes us on a guided tour of Palazzo Citterio, where the Californian artist is setting up his solo exhibition.

Your first surprise just after you cross the threshold of Palazzo Citterio is the space – huge, empty and abandoned. This is in the centre of Milan, via Brera 14, and the unexpected venue chosen by Fondazione Trussardi for the Paul McCarthy exhibition, in what should have been the extension of the Grande Brera, designed by James Stirling in 1986. A few days before the opening on 20 May, the curator and artistic director of the Fondazione, Massimiliano Gioni, gives us a behind the scenes taster, taking advantage of the evening interruption in the feverish work on the exhibition. "Visitors will be greeted ", he explains, "by a sculpture, a naked and life size self-portrait of McCarthy, morbidly reclining on a sofa". At the entrance there are also some preparatory models for Pig Island, a work that McCarthy has been constructing by accumulation for seven years and which was inspired by Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean area. The route will end with an oversized ketchup bottle, floating in the courtyard.

"We were looking for someone who could fill and manage to dialogue with such an imposingly large space", continues the curator. And when you plunge into the bowels of the Palazzo, you discover why. After passing about ten video installations and large size sculptures, hyper-realistic "masks" in coloured silicon indifferent to the exposed pipes running along the concrete walls, you reach the inner core, the enormous Pig Island heralded at the entrance. It is the first time the sculpture has left his Los Angeles studio. Transported to Milan in several containers and then lowered into the Palazzo through an open skylight in the courtyard, it was dismantled and then reassembled as it was, to a manic degree. "Even the dust", points out the curator, "was replaced exactly where it was ". There is room on about ten polystyrene pedestals for Bush and Angelina Jolie, a large pig (which moves and seems to breathe) and a battery, as well as boxes, cans and empty packaging scattered all around, in an untidy and irreverent after-party of the American myth.

With this exhibition, the Foundation continues to pursue its cultural "nomads" calling. Ten years spent exploring city spaces that are as exceptional as they are ignored (all recorded in the fine book "What Good is the Moon?" recently published by Hatje Cantz). After the Istituto dei Ciechi (Urs Fischer), the Vecchi Magazzini at the Stazione di Porta Genova (Paola Pivi), Sala Reale in the Stazione Centrale (John Bock), Palazzo Litta (Peter Fischli and David Weiss) and Palazzo Dugnani (Tacita Dean), the public – Milanese and non – now have an opportunity to explore another forgotten or little accessible place in the city with the magnifying glass of contemporary art. McCarthy's "carnascialesco" universe is combined with the great unfinished work by James Stirling, appointed to design new exhibition spaces, a cafe and a library for what was to be the Grande Brera, a project launched in the 1970s. Abandoned and never completed, thirty years later, Palazzo Citterio is about to become the centre of attention once again. Elena Sommariva

21.5.2010 – 4.7.2010
Paul McCarthy. Pig Island
Palazzo Citterio, via Brera 14, Milano

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