Two men lie side by side in a narrow wooden bed. They wear dark suits, white shirts, and black shoes. Their eyes are open, yet their bodies appear stiff and strangely lifeless. At closer look you can see: it’s the same man twice — Maurizio Cattelan. For his work “We” from 2010, the Italian artist commissioned two incredibly lifelike wax figures of himself. The scene could also depict an intimate moment between a same-sex couple — or their shared wake.
Tatsächlich ist die Installation die detailgetreue Nachstellung einer Fotografie des schwulen Künstlerpaars Gilbert & George. Drei Jahre zuvor hatten sie sich für “In Bed with Lorca” in das Bett Federico García Lorcas im ehemaligen Sommerhaus seiner Familie bei Granada gelegt. In ihren charakteristischen Anzügen und steif nebeneinander ausgestreckt, wirken sie wie Liegefiguren auf einem mittelalterlichen Grabmal. Der Ort verleiht der Inszenierung ihre besondere Bedeutung: Lorca lebte und arbeitete hier, bevor der homosexuelle Dichter 1936 von franquistischen Milizen ermordet wurde.
A Nod to Gilbert & George
Gilbert & George, who have spent decades intertwining life, love, and art, bring into focus not only Lorca’s sexuality but also forge a link between gay artists across generations — making visible a sexuality that Lorca could not openly live in his time.
Cattelan verändert an dieser Inszenierung, die nun in seiner Ausstellung “Night” in der Berliner Neuen Nationalgalerie zu sehen ist, nur ein kleines, jedoch entscheidendes Detail: Er ersetzt das schwule Paar durch sich selbst. Aus zwei Männern wird einer, der sich verdoppelt — vielleicht, weil Cattelan sich selbst nicht zu genügen scheint. Bei allem Humor wirkt die Aneignung weniger wie eine Parodie als wie eine Verbeugung vor Gilbert & George. Zugleich führt sie mitten hinein in eine Frage, die Cattelans Werk immer wieder stellt: Wie stabil ist das männliche Ich?
First Comprehensive Solo Show in Germany
“We” is one of the works in Cattelan’s first comprehensive solo show in Germany — a retrospective is not what the Berlin exhibition intends to be. For the glass hall designed by Mies van der Rohe, Cattelan has fused older works with several new productions into an installation that circles around history, power, memory, and belief. The museum itself becomes a kind of secular church.
In the center stands “Him” — one of the best-known and most controversial works by Cattelan from 2001, which is presented in the exhibition almost in a sacred manner. From behind you initially see only a small male figure kneeling with folded hands — at first glance a praying boy. Only when you walk around the figure do you recognize Adolf Hitler’s face. Cattelan has stripped the dictator of the uniform, pose, and insignia with which power is usually made visible. What remains is a childlike body in a posture of humility and submission. “The historical horror appears vulnerable, praying and almost harmless,” says Cattelan about the work. “Evil becomes dangerous when it pleads for compassion.”
Divine Punishment for the Pope
This effect runs like a red thread through Cattelan’s work: he repeatedly dismantles images in which authority is staged as masculine, sovereign, and invulnerable. He amplified this already in 1999 with “La Nona Ora,” the piece that made him internationally famous — and which is not on view in the Berlin show. Pope John Paul II lies on a red carpet, toppled by a meteorite that seemingly plummets from the heavens to strike him down.
Cattelan inverts an ancient religious motif into the grotesque. The idea of divine punishment, often used in the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, now strikes the highest earthly representative of God. The Pope still clutches his cross, yet neither his office nor his faith protects his body from catastrophe. From the untouchable paternal figure emerges a vulnerable old man.
A Confrontation with Guilt, Body, Sacrifice, and Redemption
In this sense, Cattelan’s power does not simply turn into impotence. He is interested in the moment when surface and meaning fall apart: the Pope remains the Pope, while his body lies on the floor. Hitler remains Hitler, even when he looks like a kneeling boy. And in “Bones” (2025), among the newer works in Berlin, the eagle—a traditional symbol of state authority, military power, and imperial reach—sits with its wings spread — on the ground.
That Cattelan repeatedly turns to images rooted in Catholic iconography is no accident. Raised in Catholic Padua, he has spent decades wrestling with guilt, the body, sacrifice, and redemption. Religion fascinates him less for its belief than for its symbolic language; in Berlin he explained: Only a few visual worlds can simultaneously tell stories of guilt, sacrifice, hope, forgiveness, failure, and redemption.
What remains is the male body — vulnerable, fallible, and stripped of its sovereign pose. In the Berlin show curated by Lisa Botti, this thread is easy to follow.
