There’s nothing quite like Toiletpaper for pricking the pre-conceptions that swirl around the contemporary art world. Artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari created the publication as an iconoclastic riposte to the self-conscious eccentricities and art-world borrowings of the publishing industry, reasoning that boundaries were there to be pushed, colour was there to be saturated, and artful vignettes could be cooked up to defeat even the most in-depth explanation.
The second Toiletpaper monograph, the Platinum Collection reassembles some of the vibrant and memorable images from the past five issues of the magazine, interspersed with a truly wide-ranging selection of texts, culled from 19th century journals, Wikipedia and several other unexpected sources. Imagery is the lifeblood of the Toiletpaper aesthetic, always bright, often scatological or willfully perverse; the Platinum Collection doesn’t disappoint.
Some of these shoots were created for other magazines, eager to square the circle of influence and bring back a little art-infused edginess into their pages – Purple, Kenzine, and Dazed & Confused among them. Just 1,000 copies are available, each with its own toad-printed ’Toiletpaper watch’, a new way of living a very unconventional brand.
