Renowned for his subversive and provocative idiom in contemporary art, Maurizio Cattelan transforms Berlin’s cultural landscape with his first major solo exhibition in Germany. Opening its doors at the Neue Nationalgalerie in parallel with Berlin Art Week, “NIGHT” comes to life on the occasion of the 2026 Preis der Nationalgalerie, awarded to the artist by an international jury. On view from September 10, 2026, to March 7, 2027, the selection unites Cattelan’s iconic works spanning several decades with a new site-specific production.
Prominent among the exhibited works are stone-of-the-art milestones in the artist’s practice, including Novecento, La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi, the contentious Hitler figure Him, and Untitled—an animatronic sculpture inspired by the protagonist in Günter Grass’s novel The Tin Drum. The museum’s staging intertwines these works with the complex themes that frequently recur throughout Cattelan’s oeuvre: childhood, violence, identity, authority, and the contemporary resonance of memory.
According to curator Lisa Botti, the exhibition title “NIGHT” signifies a state of mind where objects are not hidden, but rather perceived in entirely altered forms under twilight’s dimming light. At the center of the exhibition stands a new site-specific installation that radically bends the architectural layout of the Neue Nationalgalerie. In the words of museum director Klaus Biesenbach, this intervention transforms Mies van der Rohe’s transparent, glass-dominated modernist “temple” into an uncanny “church” that becomes an organic extension of the exhibition itself.
This gathering also closes a historical chapter. Exactly twenty years prior to this monumental show, Cattelan co-curated the 4th Berlin Biennale in 2006. The artist’s humorous yet razor-sharp critiques directed at religion, power, death, responsibility, and institutional authority find a deeply resonant echo in Berlin—a city bearing the full weight of collective memory.
