Gallery 01:14

CYCLES OF LIFE

If Maurizio Cattelan helps us see with fresh eyes by turning the banal into monuments, he also does the opposite by making the eternal questions of life and death, togetherness and loneliness more concrete. The work Breath, a curled-up, sleeping man and a dog, is made of Carrara marble – a material associated with prestigious subjects and classical sculpture. This, however, is a scene that could represent a homeless person, even if the man bears a resemblance to the artist himself. The fact that the sculpture is not placed on a plinth adds to the sense that the two are sharing the room with us on equal terms.

In this room, we also find Cecilia Edefalk’s Elevator, in which a woman stretches her arms out in a gesture that could signify both giving and receiving. Perhaps this is an annunciation, the moment when the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she has been chosen to give birth to the son of God. Edefalk’s paintings are often made in series. The interaction between them generates tangible energy fields, and their shimmering surfaces make the female figures seem to hover, causing the distance between work, visitors, and space to dissolve.

The presence of the pigeons further enhances this sense of dissolving borders – outdoors and indoors are merged. Like ominous spirits, they have followed us from room to room. Regarded by many as flying rats, the white variety, the dove, is also seen as a symbol of peace and the Holy Spirit in Christianity: a harbinger from heaven to earth. We humans, who are used to being in command and observing everything around us, are now the ones being silently watched.