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June 19, 2010 – Review
Paul McCarthy’s "Pig Island" at Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan
Filipa Ramos
Solitude, abandon, restlessness, vulnerability: feelings a visitor might not expect to experience at the Palazzo Citterio. The refined 18th century rococo façade is at home in the elegant Brera district of Milan, but despite its chic external architecture, this sober face hides the perfect setting for Paul McCarthy’s delirious “Pig Island.” This exhibition displays iconic works from the Los Angeles artist together with new pieces, resulting in a complex installation that is a single, coherent articulation of McCarthy’s rhetoric and multifarious forms.
The Palazzo’s first room contains a crumbled figure of George Bush sodomizing a pig’s carcass amidst an endless array of (clearly allegorical) detritus—this rosy mass resembles the leftovers of a huge wedding cake. Static (Pink) (2004-2009), is a monument to an expired struggle: while that specific war is over, as well as the ideology it resisted, what remains is the decadent mourning of art’s impotency. Next to Static (Pink), in a dim, soiled, humid corner, an old man with no pants sleeps on a precariously small cot. It is clearly a portrait of the artist, so realistic that you have to get very near to it to confirm whether it is breathing. The closer you get, the more miserable …