Conceived as a satellite project of the Venice Biennal in 2001, Hollywood by Maurizio Cattelan was a replica of the giant HOLLYWOOD letters installed for six months right above the rubbish tip of Palermo (the biggest rubbish dump in Sicily).

“It’s like spraying stardust over the Sicilian landscape: it’s a cut and paste dream” explained Cattelan. “I tried to overlap two opposite realities, Sicily and Hollywood: after all, images are just projections of desire, and I wanted to shade their boundaries. It might be a parody, but it’s also a tribute. It’s like freezing the moment in which truth turns into hallucination. There is something hypnotic in Hollywood: it’s a sign that immediately speaks about obsessions, failures and ambitions. It is a magnet for contradictions.”
HOLLYWOOD was a sort of social sculpture that transformed the citizens of Palermo into the actors of a surreal film.

At the time, the Foundation Sandretto Re Rebaudengo organised a special flight to take collectors, gallerists and journalists from Venice to the rubbish tip to see the installation and mingle with the local workers.

Pictures of Hollywood are part of Universal Experience:Art, Life and the Tourist’s Eye, at the
Hayward Gallery, London, through December 11.
Via Artkrush. Image.