TOILETPAPER Magazine’s Surreal World Of Art
TOILETPAPER magazine has gained renown for its audacious, whimsical, and surreal photographic installations. The brainchild of visual artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, the image-based publication has been a constant since its establishment in 2010. The duo have been a constant source of debate and discussion with heavy media attention through their spectacles.
Their newest exhibition, titled “RUN AS SLOW AS YOU CAN,” was recently unveiled at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Centre in Mumbai. With its emphasis on the “daily dualities of modern existence,” the exhibit takes a critical look at the “the homes we inhabit, the objects we own, and the people that surround us.”
In their distinctive style, the exhibition features a creative collaboration of Cattelan’s and Ferrari’s love of irony and element. Each and every aspect of the exhibit is brimming with fascinating and engaging visuals through “photography, design and architecture.” Deconstructing the normative assumptions surrounding art and the world-at-large, the artists hope that the murals blur the line between reality and imagination. Collages of humans, objects, and animals cover every inch of the wall becoming a full-bodied experience for its viewers. Spread across four floors and galleries of the art center the exhibition is organized into four distinct chapters. Each segment of the exhibition contributes to the larger thematic narrative.
The initial section, intriguingly named “Take a Left, Right (?),” welcomes visitors into a visually stimulating maze, setting the tone for the rest of the exhibition. It includes “graphic themes of desire, repulsion, irony and gluttony.” The second gallery, named “Is There a Room in the Sky (?),” expands the idea of cultural consumption in the modern age. Its “in your face” style, with optical illusions and gigantic art pieces, enlarges the scale of the narrative (as they put it: it enters the “deeper subconscious”).
Within the third gallery, titled “A House is a Building That People Live in,” the curators created a simulate home that inverts and subverts expectations. Every aspect of the house — from exterior to interior — feels overly extravagant and synthetic. It becomes a home that “interrupts the concept of the ‘perfect home’ with deliberate misalignments.” Lastly, the final chapter, referred to as the “Control Room,” reverts to a more minimalist presentation. Consisting of “archival objects, images and works,” the gallery acts as a summation for the the previous three sections. It allows its audience to stop, think, and question: “in an overdosed contemporary society, how slowly can you run?”
TOILETPAPER, through its display of the surreal and dazzling, is an attempt to hold up a mirror towards the ugly aspects of society. Extremely ostentatious, “RUN AS SLOW AS YOU CAN” intentionally critiques and provokes. Orchestrating a captivating story, the exhibit presents an entrancing montage of thought-provoking ideas for modern viewers.
Featured Image Via TOILETPAPER