Diana Stigter – Maurizio Cattelan: Another Fucking Readymade, 1996

In 1996, as part of the exhibition Crap Shoot at the De Appel in Amsterdam, the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan stole the entire contents of Bloom Gallery and exhibited them at De Appel. Diana Stigter, former co-owner of Bloom Gallery, describes the incident from her perspective.

Annet Gelink and I (the Bloom Gallery owners) arrived at the gallery around eleven that morning after a rather boring studio visit. When we opened the door on what was supposed to be a day like any other, we immediately saw that everything was different. We stared into an empty space. Not only had the exhibition completely disappeared, but also computers, documents, personal articles – everything was gone. We stood there in complete shock, trying to find a point to focus on.
We did not see any traces of an ordinary burglary: the door was not forced, the windows were not smashed. We just saw one empty space. It was scary. Who was so interested in taking our stuff, and besides, what was the point of stealing the heavy wooden sculptures we were exhibiting at that moment? They were not worth a lot of money and it must have taken hours to get everything out of the gallery. We were still looking at each other rather desperately when one of us saw a tiny sticker with the words “Crap Shoot” on one of the walls. Then everything became clear.
We realized that we were part of the subversive action of one of the participants of the show, of the same title as on the sticker, organized by the curatorial class at the De Appel. Maurizio Cattelan was one of the invited artists and it did not seem such a big step from taping your gallerist to the wall to emptying the space of another art dealer. Once we found out it was him, I secretly had to laugh and could see the fun of the project if I was not involved. Annet, on the contrary, was furious. To call this art was insane. She insisted on calling the police. When they arrived, the curators of the De Appel show, and I believe Maurizio himself, had also entered the gallery. They started to explain to us the history of radicalism in art and why this was such a great work in that tradition. At that point the police lost track and asked us if they could leave to attend to more important matters.
When we found out that the contents of the gallery, including our current show, were supposed to be on display at the De Appel on Friday and that we would get it back safely and undamaged later that week, Annet also lightened up. We spent the rest of the day on a terrace in the sun.
On Friday afternoon we went to the opening and we both had to admit that it was one of the better shows from the curatorial course. Later that night we all danced together at the after party and were friends for as long as it lasts.
The next morning Annet and I had to read in the newspaper how “duplicitous the behavior of the ‘Bloom girls’ was.” The critic – who unfortunately is no longer with us  – wondered why we made such a big fuss in the beginning only to end up doing a pirouette with Maurizio as if nothing had happened.
We never found out how Cattelan and the curators entered the gallery. We suspect that our neighbors or an assistant were part of the conspiracy, but some art is better left unexplained.

Atopia Project #5.66, Lifting: Theft in Art, 2008, page 39

http://atopiaprojects.org/5.66/images/LIFTING.pdf

Meer informatie:
https://robscholtemuseum.nl/?s=Diana+Stigter
https://robscholtemuseum.nl/maurizio-cattelan-what-ive-learned-about-copies/