Goshka Macuga’s new show has opened at Fondazione Prada in Milan. Several works are exhibited atop ’Before the Beginning and After the End’, Macuga’s site-specific collaboration with Patrick Tresset, including John Andrea’s ’Arden Anderson and Norma Murphy’ (foreground), 1972
The Polish-born, London-based artist Goshka Macuga ripped into Milan like a firecracker last night, dazzling with the debut of an outstanding new show at the Fondazione Prada. The first maverick move of the night? Setting her human boyfriend next to her new, fascinatingly real-looking robot (impeccably modelled on said boyfriend) and snapping several photos of the ‘twins’ with her own iPhone.
The android was a perfect replica of his human counterpart, right down to a bushy black beard, curly hair, big brown eyes and immaculate jawline. ‘The only thing missing is the sparkle in his eye!’ Macuga remarked, while admiring the sheen of the robot’s skin.
Manufactured in Japan by a company called A-Lab, Macuga’s android is the nucleus of an intriguing show entitled ‘To the Son of Man Who Ate the Scroll’, dedicated, in part, to ‘humanity’s concern over the end of mankind’.
Sprawling through the vast exhibition space, it features installations, performances by humans and robots, as well as new works and curated pieces from the Fondazione Prada’s vast collection. The dense jumble defies easy description, even for the artist herself – ‘I really can’t put it into a few words,’ she said on the sidelines of the well-attended opening. ‘How much time do you have?’ – but a preoccupation with a post-human state seems to be the unifying theme.
Certainly, the show’s energy is remarkable. Some of the most electric moments were to be had in a trio of rooms featuring 73 cast bronze heads of historic heavyweights, from Einstein to Freud, which were speared onto shiny metal rods and linked together to look like giant molecular structures. In another room, machines drew illustrations on huge reams of white paper, like robotic hands. Elsewhere, at Fondazione Prada’s 15th-century studiolo, Macuga had stationed an actress, who recited excerpts from Charles Darwin’s Natural Selection in Esperanto.
How exciting to see that following all the buzz surrounding the Fondazione Prada’s glittering opening, shows like this prove it’s the real deal.
The exhibition includes an android replica of Macuga’s real-life boyfriend, right down to a bushy black beard, curly hair, and big brown eyes
’To the Son of Man Who Ate the Scroll’, by Goshka Macuga, 2015. Courtesy of the artist
A trio of rooms featured 73 cast bronze heads of historic heavyweights, from Einstein to Freud, speared onto shiny metal rods and linked together to look like giant molecular structures
’International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, Configuration 6, Humanity’s Survival: Jared Diamond, Jean-François Lyotard, Francis Bacon, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Crutzen, Nick Bostrum, HP Lovecraft, Michel Foucault’, by Goshka Macuga, 2015
’Al la filo de la homo kiu manĝis la skribrulaĵon’, by Goshka Macuga, 2016. In Fondazione Prada’s 15th-century marquetry studiolo, an actress recites excerpts from Charles Darwin’s Natural Selection in Esperanto. Performer: Valeria Sara Costantin
A preoccupation with a post-human state seems to be the unifying theme. Pictured: ’Before the Beginning and After the End’, by Goshka Macuga and Patrick Tresset, 2016
Macuga’s works are surrounded by a selection of pieces from the Prada Collection. From left: ’"Negotiation sites" after Saburo Murakami’, by Goshka Macuga, 2016; ’Float’, by Robert Breer, 1970 (2000); ’The Golden Sphere’, by James Lee Byars, 1992; ’Extrusion’, by Thomas Heatherwick, 2009; ’Cubo’, by Alberto Giacometti, 1934; ’Concetto spaziale. Natura’, by Lucio Fontana, 1982; and ’Colpo di gong’, by Eliseo Mattiacci, 1993
INFORMATION
’Goshka Macuga: To the Son of Man Who Ate the Scroll’ runs until 19 June 2016. For more information, visit the Fondazione Prada website
Installation photography: Delfino Sisto Legnani Studio. Courtesy of Fondazione Prada
ADDRESS
Largo Isarco, 2
20139 Milan
Italy
-
The new CLA brings Mercedes's all-electric know-how to a new market sectorMixing high tech moves with tremendous tactile qualities, the buttery smooth new Mercedes-Benz CLA is an electric winner. Wallpaper* drives across Denmark in a triumphant new car with a three-pointed star
-
Collagerie and Zara Home debut perfectly imperfect furniture and accessoriesLucinda Chambers’ Collagerie collaborates with Zara Home on a collection that is an ode to the everyday
-
‘A beginning is a dialogue’: Simone Bellotti reveals a first glimpse of his vision for Jil Sander with an EP and music videoTitled ‘Wanderlust’, the music video and EP is a collaboration with Bochum Welt, signalling an esoteric start to Simone Bellotti’s tenure at the house before his runway debut later this year
-
Photographer Mohamed Bourouissa reflects on society, community and the marginalised at MASTMohamed Bourouissa unites his work from the last two decades at Bologna’s Fondazione MAST
-
Ten super-cool posters for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics have just been unveiledThe Olympic committees asked ten young artists for their creative take on the 2026 Milano Cortina Games
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been up to this weekThis week saw the Wallpaper* team jet-setting to Jordan and New York; those of us left in London had to make do with being transported via the power of music at rooftop bars, live sets and hologram performances
-
25 artists reimagine the teapot at Milan Design Week 2025Come to Loewe’s cross-cultural tea party: pots of fun in Milan as artists, designers and architects celebrate the universal comfort of tea
-
Inside the unexpected collaboration between Marni’s Francesco Risso and artists Slawn and SoldierNew exhibition ‘The Pink Sun’ will take place at Francesco Risso’s palazzo in Milan in collaboration with Saatchi Yates, opening after the Marni show today, 26 February
-
The creative mind at work: a century of storyboarding at Fondazione PradaFondazione Prada’s 'Osservatorio, A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings' features some of the most celebrated names in cinema working from the late 1920s up to 2024
-
What makes fashion and art such good bedfellows?There has always been a symbiosis between fashion and the art world. Here, we look at what makes the relationship such a successful one
-
Miami’s new Museum of Sex is a beacon of open discourseThe Miami outpost of the cult New York destination opened last year, and continues its legacy of presenting and celebrating human sexuality
