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This tableaux relates to earlier works by Cattelan, particularly the emotionally charged Bidibidobidiboo (1996) in which a taxidermy-squirrel appears to have committed suicide. By reducing the human experience to a miniature scale, Cattelan exaggerates the fragility of life. Cattelan’s work balances a child-like innocence and humor with violence or death.
In Cattelan’s installation, the viewer searches for a world within a world, a domestic narrative within a domestic environment, under the roof of a public space. Finding the private conflict is unsettling even though it is presented in a comic manner. It is perhaps too familiar, evoking early memories of discovering the difference between the real and imaginary worlds. By dislocating the experience from the white cube of the gallery space to family environs, Cattelan shifts the art experience from the public realm into the personal. Yet at the same time, the private is made more public.
While on the surface Cattelan’s works entertain, on closer consideration the tragic condition of comedy unfolds. The artist reminds us that laughter heals—not as escape but as a release of our experiences.