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l Maurizio Cattelan, b. 1960 The first, they said, should be sweet like love; the second bitter, like life; and the third soft, like death. taxidermied donkey, dog, cat, bird 65 by 47 1/4 by 15 3/4 in. 165.1 by 120 by 40 cm. Executed in 1998, this work is unique. Provenance Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris Exhibited Melbourne, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne International Biennial, Signs of Life, May - June 1999 Maurizio Cattelan is the enfant terrible of the art world. Variously described as genius, joker, even thief, Cattelan is an artist who has been shown at four Venice Biennales; he is an artist who manages to disguise deeply-considered and important issues within objects and scenarios that are, basically, very amusing. We laugh with him, and then we wonder why. Cattelan is an artist who, in 1996, 'made' a work called Another Fucking Readymade at De Appel Fondation in Amsterdam by breaking into the Galerie Bloom and, literally, stealing the entire contents of the gallery's then current exhibition and displaying 'its' art as 'his'. This is an art that manifests itself in a number of guises, that forces the viewer to question the verities of society, the individual, personality, even art itself. This fluidity of Signification that fizzes through Cattelan's whole enterprise often results in objects that operate on a number of levels. Cattelan's most celebrated series of works are his taxidermied animal pieces. He has presented stuffed horses, dogs, pigeons, squirrels and mice, sometimes surrounded by an environment that suggests a narrative, sometimes suspended in midair. Within the oeuvre of these extraordinary taxidermied works are a very special group of stacked animals. Three examples exist: Love Saves Life (1995), Love Lasts Forever (1997) and the present work, The first, they said, should be sweet like love; the second bitter, like life; and the third soft, like death from 1998. Seen together they may be seen to represen