TOILETPAPER's largest immersive exhibition in india opens its doors

TOILETPAPER’s largest exhibition in India to date

Mumbai-based Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center presents TOILETPAPER’s largest exhibition in India, titled RUN AS SLOW AS YOU CAN. Running from July 22 to October 22, 2023, the vibrant show, curated by Mafalda Millies and Roya Sachs, presents the work of the renowned Italian creative studio and image-based magazine founded by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, immersing visitors in an oversaturated, hyperreal universe that seamlessly blends commercial photography with a surrealist approach. Drawing from popular culture, advertising, religious iconography, and art history, TOILETPAPER investigates the current phenomenon of hyper-consumption of images, all with a dose of irony.

chapter 1 – Take a Left, Right | all images courtesy of TOILETPAPER

RUN AS SLOW AS YOU CAN at Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center

As the title suggests, the exhibition at Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center (find more here) is both disorienting and seemingly nonsensical, an intentional nod to the themes that sit at the epicenter of TOILETPAPER’s practice. In an overdosed contemporary society, how slowly can you run? Divided into four chapters, the exhibition challenges our existence and engagement in an increasingly virtual world, where we are constantly bombarded with visual stimuli. The duo uses photography, design and architecture as tools to bring into question the homes we inhabit, the objects we own, and the people that surround us.

The first chapter, Take a Left, Right?, invites audiences into a visually charged labyrinth. Desire, repulsion, irony and gluttony collide in a photomontage maze that conveys a playful and uncanny ambiguity. An environment that at first feels like the kind of manipulations commonly found in advertising is in fact a compilation of illogical narratives and unexpected juxtapositions. As visitors gradually navigate their way through, the second chapter, Is There Room in the Sky?, delves into the depths of the subconscious. In this optical illusion, the audience’s perception of space and time is warped by the inescapable dream world of a digital meta skyscape. Things are not quite as they seem, as one gradually notices the bizarre and satirical sculptures that ‘float in the sky.’

chapter 1 – Take a Left, Right

Reality continues to dissolve in the third chapter, A House Is a Building That People Live In, introducing
the concept of the ‘perfect home.’ However, the idea of a safe space is interrupted by a sense of strangeness:
a home without a roof, household utilities with no function. The artists subtly tease us to interact with what we soon discover to be artificial perceptions of our ‘ideal home.’ Eclectic mediums collide in perfect harmony in this explosive and lively madhouse, which can also be surveilled from the Art House’s fourth floor.

Finally, the culminating chapter, The Control Room, emerges as the beating heart of TOILETPAPER. The Lynchian monochromatic space sets a stark contrast to the visually saturated lower floors and highlights the craft and inspirations of the artists. Sprinkled with objects, images and works from the studio’s headquarters in Milan, this space is the beginning and the end, the soul and essence of the artists’ work.

chapter 3 – A House Is a Building That People Live In