Maurizio Cattelan has unveiled a provocative new solo exhibition titled ‘Bones’ at Gagosian London. The exhibition features a series of 24K gold-plated panels riddled with bullet holes. The gallery describes the damaged surfaces as “metaphors for creation and destruction.” They explore the uneasy relationship between material wealth and the widespread availability of deadly weapons.
At the center of the gallery sits a striking marble boulder placed atop a couch. This work, straddling the line between realism and surrealism, raises questions about its mythic presence and unexpected placement. According to the gallery, it stems from Cattelan’s “desire to produce an object endowed with a mythic presence and the familiarity of history, an ancient-seeming artifact displaced to a contemporary setting.”
Together, the golden panels and marble sculpture reflect on opposing forces: domesticity and wildness, creation and destruction, wealth and vulnerability.
Cattelan spoke about the new pieces and why they resonate in today’s America. When asked if the gold-plated gunshot panels are an act of destruction or creation, Cattelan replied, “They’re what happens when destruction tries to dress up as creation—and vice versa. Every hole is a birthmark.
The violence is real, but it’s also a shortcut to something else: intimacy, power, maybe even beauty. It’s not just about shooting—it is about what you choose to aim at.”
Cattelan explained that the panels were conceptualized in New York in 2024 and created in a controlled, almost intimate environment using a 12-gauge shotgun.
Bones’ reflections on creation and destruction
He said, “Here, the violence is focused, almost meditative. Think less action movie, more sacred ritual with gunpowder.”
When asked about the marble element of the Notre Dame sculpture placed on a sofa, Cattelan said, “Because even myths need somewhere to sit. Notre Dame looks like it’s been dug up from a forgotten past—part relic, part ruin, part god fallen from grace.
The horns give it a totemic feel, like it used to mean something sacred. Putting it on a sofa messes with the scale of history—suddenly this heavy, ancient presence is in your living room, quiet but loaded. It’s not just resting.
It’s waiting.”
Cattelan’s sculpture featuring the guitar-playing skeleton, Deaf (2025), is described as nihilistic. When asked if we should laugh or cry at it, Cattelan replied, “Maybe it’s not about emotion, but recognition. Deaf could be a portrait of the afterlife—or a warning disguised as a lullaby.
A masked skeleton playing to no one, rocking endlessly in a glass coffin. It’s what remains when identity becomes costume, and time is a closed loop. Not a death, but the rehearsal of one.”
The exhibition is at Gagosian gallery, Davies Street, London, until 24 May.
