After establishing their experimental image-only magazine, Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari became recognised for their specific visual style. The Italian duo's aesthetic is retro and kitsch with a comical flair. Each work draws inspiration from found images taken from the internet and magazines.
Read MoreFor TOILETPAPER's Untitled Series (2017), Cattelan and Ferrari recycle imagery of red lips, smoking pipes, and pool balls and mount them in decadent gold frames. The artists depict everyday objects like consumer goods or animal food in highly stylised compositions and vivid colour palettes. The Untitled Series use of peculiar visuals is influenced by Surrealism and break the aesthetic norms of fashion and advertising by introducing humour and parody to the narrative.
The artworks are made from gilded wood, mirror, glass, and UV colour prints.
For this series of work, TOILETPAPER teamed up with British photographer Martin Parr. The project took as its starting point the collaboration between Martin Parr, Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari for the book ToiletMartin PaperParr published in 2020. Using images from TOILETPAPER's and Parr's rich archives, the artists presented an array of work depicting animals, food, and the human body in a characteristically satirical style. This series of work focuses on the contemporary obsession with images.
The work comprises of small, medium, and large format prints and was first displayed at Villa Medici in Rome, Italy.
Be Water (2021) is a site-specific installation designed by TOILETPAPER. During Milan Design Week 2021, Cattelan and Ferrari transformed the municipal swimming pool Cozzi with a large-scale wall mural.
The commission features the iconic TOILETPAPER aesthetic, portraying a collage of a red-lipped woman's face and hands floating above deep blue waves of water. The mural will remain on display until September 2022.
