Middle Finger By Maurizio Cattelan, Milan, Italy

Maurizio Cattelan along with long-term collaborators Ali Subotnick and Massimiliano Gioni, curated the 2006 Berlin Biennale , ran the Wrong Gallery , a glass door in New York attracting many highly accomplished artists to exhibit and published Charley: an occasional slightly satirical arts journal. He frequently submitted articles to international publications such as Flash Art .
Cattelan’s personal art practice has led to him gaining a reputation as an art scene’s joker. One his best known sculptures, ‘La Nona Ora’ consists an effigy Pope John Paul II in full ceremonial dress being crushed by a meteor and is a good example his typically humorous approach to work. Another Cattelan’s quirks is his use a ‘stand-in’ in media interviews equipped with a stock evasive answers and non-sensical explanations. Cattelan’s art makes fun various systems order – be it social niceties or his regular digs at the art world – and he ten utilises themes and motifs from art the past and other cultural sectors in order to get his point across. Cattelan saw no reason why contemporary art should be excluded from the critical spotlight it shines on other areas life and his work seeks to highlight the incongruous nature the world and our interventions within it no matter where they may lie. His work was ten based on simple puns or subverts clichéd situations by, for example, substituting animals for people in sculptural tableaux. Frequently morbidly fascinating, Cattelan’s dark humour setted his work above the simple pleasures well-made visual one-liners.
He has been described by Jonathan P. Binstock, curator contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery Art "as one the great post-Duchampian artists and a smartass, too".