Maurizio Cattelan returns to Gagosian London this spring with Bones, a charged new body of work that continues the artist’s career-long interrogation of violence, symbolism, and materiality. Opening April 8 at the Davies Street gallery, the exhibition features gold-plated stainless-steel panels pierced by gunfire, as well as a singular marble sculpture, both of which challenge ideas of permanence, reverence, and ritual. Known for work that courts controversy and often courts destruction, Cattelan’s latest pieces reflect a familiar tension between icon and rupture.
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The centerpiece of Bones is a series of 24-karat gold-plated panels that have been deliberately punctured with high-caliber gunshots. The precise violence of the bullet holes transforms the metal into something scarred and symbolic. Each panel becomes a surface for reflection, both literal and metaphorical, as the holes recall not only physical trauma but also the act of creation through force. The concept resonates with the artist’s past work, which has been stolen, attacked, and even consumed by viewers.
These panels, austere in their arrangement, evoke the aesthetics of Minimalism and Conceptual art. But Cattelan complicates the language of those movements by introducing destruction as a formal gesture, turning violent rupture into a visual strategy. References to Gustav Metzger’s auto-destructive practices and William Burroughs’s shotgun paintings ground the work in a lineage of artists who have similarly used obliteration as an act of expression. Gold, a material known for its transformative, impermanent value, adds another layer, suggesting wealth that can vanish, power that corrodes, and sacredness desecrated.
Positioned in dialogue with the panels is Notre Dame (2025), a lone sculpture composed of Carrara marble and horn, resting uneasily on a domestic couch. This hybrid object channels the grandeur of ancient myth while remaining rooted in the surreal. The boulder, with its curved horns, evokes both deity and beast, a fossilized presence from an unspoken past. By placing it on a familiar household object, Cattelan disorients the viewer, destabilizing the comfort of domestic space.
Also launching on April 8, Gagosian Burlington Arcade will present a parallel exhibition of Cattelan’s editions, watercolors, and smaller works. Accompanying the exhibitions is the rerelease of Francesco Bonami’s Stuck: Maurizio Cattelan—The Unauthorized Autobiography, updated in English for the occasion. Alongside it comes a new book, Leftovers: The Bonami’s Cattelans, showcasing a fresh selection of the artist’s drawings, further broadening the scope of Cattelan’s current output.
Through physical damage, mythic objects, and symbolic material choices, he invites viewers to consider the fragility of power, the unpredictability of legacy, and the uneasy border between creation and destruction. As always, Cattelan’s work doesn’t rest quietly, it reverberates, unsettles, and leaves a trace.
