Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it so. I am the ultimate, eternal optimist. That said, it’s also important to know when some-thing just isn’t right. There should be some solace or freedom in such a realization, but if that’s ever true, it’s likely infrequent at best because there’s comfort in denial. We need to balance what we want with the reality of our situation; otherwise, denial can compound a wrong.
Maurizio Cattelan’s sculptures are often jarring. For the artist of such pop-culturally infamous works as America (his 2016 gold-plated toilet installed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York) and the banana duct-taped to the wall at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019, his ostrich (1997) initially seems innocuous. But the effort and impossibility of the animal burying its head in a hardwood floor reiterate the devastating, irreparable damage denial can cause.
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