Maurizio Cattelan Turned This Years RenBen Gala into a Silent Party

What a blessing to have silence not just available but imposed at an art event—to finally be able to focus on the experience of the art without the distraction of social interaction. For a writer like myself, who hopes for exactly that condition every time I visit a show, this year’s Renaissance Society gala in Chicago was simply perfect. “A lot of events mistake noise for energy, and I wanted to undo that confusion,” artist Maurizio Cattelan, who designed the event, tells me, adding that silence changes how people receive things. “It is not that communication stops altogether; it just becomes less efficient and more exposed. People write, they wait, they look longer.” To him, it felt like a good premise for an art event, though he acknowledged that many artists have engaged with silence far better than he ever could, from John Cage to Joseph Grigely. “I was not trying to make a statement so much as interrupt an automatic behavior. A gala usually runs on social reflex, and silence makes that reflex visible.”

Only a provocateur like Cattelan could turn the legendary RenBen gala—which this year raised nearly $600,000 in support of the museum’s exhibitions, performance series, concerts and public programs, all of which remain free and open to the public—into its own work of art: a silent scavenger hunt, a collective performance and an expansive solo show that is also a curated group show. In its final act, the evening transformed again into something resembling an Italian wedding celebration, or sagra, those village-wide festivities that dissolve distinctions between host and guest.

“A solo show is already full of other people. Assistants, references, ghosts, interruptions,” Cattelan says, clarifying that the evening would have been nothing without the sum of its parts. Many of the artists involved had ties to the Ren; some created situations in which guests could interact and take something with them. “The game was simple: give guests a structure, then let them get slightly lost inside it.”

Taking over two floors of the historic downtown architecture of the Chicago Athletic Association, Cattelan choreographed a journey through rooms that triggered a smile in each of the evening’s 400 guests. Silent films, cutout photos—the works could be his or simply left there. The rooms felt like abandoned hotel interiors: a crime scene, or the trace of someone who abruptly disappeared. “The exhibition space is just left as it is,” reads one of the scripts on a screen. Bottles of Franciacorta were served from a bathtub. Silent waiters nodded to guests to offer the Midwest cicchetti, guests bowing back in thanks—a muted social ritual that becomes, itself, a performance.

A screen projected an “urgent plea” to donate to the institution, while also emphasizing this as a moment for “fun,” encouraging us to find the pleasure in it. “Art should make you feel; Art should make you think, And the REN will give you the chance, To understand that Renaissance never ended,” it reads. Next to it sat a classic church donation box. One room appeared to be under renovation, covered in transparent plastic sheets. In another, a cadaver-like video lies like algae on a beach. The gala was a labyrinthine journey—people moved through it like children exploring, eventually arriving in a room filled with balloons, like a maze.

A room for Polaroids turned every visitor into the performance’s protagonist. In another, a magic card game unfolds without words. In yet another, an animated skeleton by Turkish artist Özgür Kar appears on a screen. A series of silent films selected by Dan Morgan and Allyson Field reminds us of the narrative and expressive power of early muted cinema. Elsewhere, visitors are invited to slow down and view art slides as if in a lecture. Then there’s a man wearing headphones playing guitar in a kind of trance, delivering, without words, a quiet statement: sometimes the inner world is larger than the one we perform for others. Nearby, Sigmund Freud is uncannily evoked in Isadora Neves Marques’s video The Early Death of Sigmund Freud. In one of the final rooms, a screen reads “your shin on your partner’s wrist,” as three performers enact it in a piece conceived by Davide Balula, until a short circuit shifts the flow.

Cattelan’s staging unfolds over two floors as a psychological, imaginative, inward-facing maze. His ban on conversation forced gala-goers to focus on the experience, stripping away that layer of social performance that so often distracts from encounters with art. And then, near the end, a white canvas with a golden toilet appears—the only unmistakable Cattelanian gesture.

In her remarks, Renaissance Society board president Nancy Lenner Frey described the evening as an “act of persistence and resistance to speed and noise.” Ironically, as the crowd gathered in the Stagg Court, executive director and chief curator Mariam Ben Salah had to call for silence—almost shouting over a crowd that, released from an hour and 30 minutes of imposed quiet, became suddenly uncontainable, immediately resuming its social performance.

Humor is not the opposite of seriousness, but a way of carrying it, she said, referring to Cattelan’s artistic practice. “Being off the beat or off the path” is a blessing, she added—before unfurling a long list of the artists who participated in Cattelan’s choreography, including Isabelle Frances McGuire, Josh Dihle, Alejandro Cesarco, Max Guy, Shir Ende, Jacob Ryan Reynolds, Ghislaije Keunmin, William Churchill, Peter Wachtler and Özgür Kar.

Then, the mood shifted. Music rang out, and the crowd started dancing to Italian folk songs played by La Tosca. Dinner was served in the style of a sala veneziana dance hall: a tricolore salad and a lemon risotto, the menu conceived by Jason Hammel of Lula Cafe. To close, a 3.5-meter-long tiramisu appeared—a very good one, it must be said—as Veneta as Maurizio himself, who has been living in Treviso.