Toilet Paper launch cocktail issue #8
Founded in 2010 by the ultra-prolific Maurizio Cattelan / Pierpaolo Ferrari duo, Toilet Paper is a necessary paper. A breathless photographic magazine that questions our contemporary obsession with images by exploring our most unspeakable desires and impulses. Cinglantes, bloody, lecherous, captivating, convoluted: the finicky stagings of the two artists push the aesthetics of the bizarre to its paroxysm, caressing surrealism and rushing into pop iconography, of candy pink “LaChapellian” plastifications in macabre scenographies. There’s cinema in there, like that grieving woman with the face streaked with eyeliner, or that burnt stroller on a background of apocalypse. Fashion too, all legs, stilettos, and couture silhouettes outside. Finally, 100 tons of references and’winks’ from their orbits, as the cover of the first issue predicted. But it is Maurizio Cattelan’s phantasmagorical vision and extraordinary humour that links all these works, and which made “the one who killed the pope with a meteorite” a superstar of contemporary art dedicated to the Guggenheim in 2011. Frozen but turbulent images which, when linked together, form a hypnotic anti-morosity pamphlet.
Supported by various great fashion magnates throughout its history, Toilet Paper now draws its inspiration from the generosity of the Berluti shoemaker. It is no surprise when we know that the president of the transalpine house is none other than Antoine Arnault, a fervent patron of contemporary art through genetic transmission. Public and established: the bridges between art and fashion are legion. Yes, but the two materials will never have entered into such perfect symbiosis except in the hands of the all-powerful LVMH and PPR families.
Last night, at Tokyo Eat, the artistic equation was verified by simple 360° on the guests at the launch cocktail. Gallery owners, curators, and close friends of the artists rubbed shoulders with the group’s big bosses (Antoine Arnault, Yves Carcelle, Geoffroy de la Bourdonnaye), stylists, writers, and other creatures in view who came to make allegiance to the manifesto of the Italian artist (he is not Catalan, Cattelan). Another tandem spotted that night: Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel from Homem-Christo, aka Daft Punk, without helmets and all smiling at the slightest flash. More practical for champagne. B.B.
