Bullet-riddled gold wall, urinating man fountain, part of artist Cattelan’s latest work

• Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s latest artwork, “Sunday,” is on display at the Gagosian Gallery in New York City.
• The artwork is a 17-foot-high, 68-foot-wide wall made of 64 stainless steel panels, plated with 24-carat gold and bearing the marks of 20,000 rounds of ammunition.
• Visitors have called it a disturbing critique of American gun culture, but Cattelan says his satire applies to any part of the developed world.

The first thing that strikes you when you walk into this gallery showcasing artist Maurizio Cattelan’s latest satirical works is the glitter of it all. The brilliant shine of 64 panels coated in 24-carat gold – in total, a gleaming wall 17 feet high and 68 feet wide.

Second, the stains on all that gold were caused by more than 20,000 rounds fired from six different weapons.

But the third effect is perhaps the most captivating: look closely and you can see yourself reflected in the gold. And when you take a selfie, as many viewers were doing last month, it looks like you’ve been riddled with bullets yourself.

Kansas photographer turns dramatic storm into stunning backdrop for bride and groom

Wealth and luxury in America, plagued by the scourge of gun violence. That’s the interpretation most visitors take from Cattelan’s solo show, the first in more than two decades by a conceptual artist famous for a series of similarly eyebrow-raising works. They include: a simple banana stuck to a wall with duct tape at Art Basel in Miami that caught everyone’s attention (and so much attention that it had to be removed); Functional toilet made of gold (it was eventually stolen); and an effigy of the Pope being struck by a meteorite.

But Cattelan himself was asked to define his new work, titled “Sunday,” and the 63-year-old Italian was adamant about not pointing the finger at the US. “We can’t be so specific,” he said in an interview, standing beside his work. “Actually it could be about any part of the world.” Asked to criticize the criticisms, he mischievously replied: “I believe in plurality. Whatever they say, it’s fine.”

Gagosian Gallery says the Cattelan show has been its most successful to date, with 14,000 visitors so far. Most visitors say their main feeling is one of contradiction – beauty and violence juxtaposed, leaving them confused about how they should feel.

“It’s beautiful, but it also has a kind of violence behind it, which is interesting because you’re not sure how to react to it,” said Brent Koskimaki, who recently visited from Calgary, Canada. “Because the creation was quite violent, right? But now it’s very peaceful and quiet.”

He is certainly correct that the work was uniquely violent. The artist oversaw a session at a shooting range in Brooklyn in which professional armorers fired two semi-automatic pistols, two semi-automatic rifles and two 12-gauge shotguns. The 64 panels were made in Italy from stainless steel, plated with gold, are 3 millimeters thick and weigh more than 80 pounds.

Cattelan said the shooting spree couldn’t have happened in Italy. “Some of these weapons are only used by the military,” he said. Still, he said all the gunfighters he encountered in the U.S. were ethical and professional, which surprised him. “They weren’t radical at all,” he said.

Another addition to the flurry of contrasts is the fountain, made from Carrara marble, which Cattelan has placed in front of a perforated wall. Mimicking a deceased friend, it looks like a man bent over a bench, urinating – and the water, of course, is gushing out.

Veronique Black, a friend of Koskimaki and his wife, Teresa, said the sad portrayal of the man was a stark contrast to the beautiful brightness of the wall.

“To me, it’s beautiful and attractive,” Black, from Montreal, said of the wall. “So you want to get close to it. You want to touch it. And then it’s a little disgusting to see a man urinating. So you’re drawn to something violent and away from humanity. We should be helping each other … but you move on to the gold.”

Teresa Koskimäki said: “I think society really is like that! We are attracted to something that is beautiful. But we are also distanced from what is happening in society and the suffering of others.”

Cattelan describes an idea that evolved over time, saying that at one point, he envisioned a gallery divided in two, with the shooter on one side of a transparent bulletproof wall and the visitor on the other. Perhaps thankfully, that didn’t happen. At another time, he envisioned a single gold panel. But at the Gagosian, “the space was demanding something much bolder. One panel became 64.”

This is a gallery, so some (but not all) of the panels are for sale. While Gagosian hasn’t released prices, he says a third of the panels have sold, with prices reportedly going for as much as $375,000 per panel.

It is presumably much more expensive than some similar bullet-riddled panels by another artist, Anthony James, being displayed elsewhere in Manhattan. The gallery confirmed that James’ lawyer has written to Gagosian asking for details about how Cattelan came up with the idea. Cattelan, through the gallery, said any claims of copying “have no merit.” This is not the first time the artist has faced such allegations; a federal judge in Miami ruled in his favor in a claim involving his famous bananas.

Cattelan has often been called a shock artist and a bad boy. contemporary ArtTough and hardly recognizable. But one recent morning, smiling and sipping a glass of tea, the artist looked as amiable as possible. “Do I look tough?” he asked, smiling.

When asked about the “shock artist” nickname, Gagosian’s senior director Andy Avini said: “I would describe him as a very sensitive artist. The symbols that are being used are shocking. They’re not necessarily his symbols – they’re symbols that are in society.”

Avni says “Sunday” is a sequel to Cattelan’s 2016 piece “America,” which featured a fully functional toilet made from 18-karat gold that was placed in one of the restrooms of the Guggenheim Museum, embodying “the American dream of opportunity for all.”

Sadly, some thieves may have taken this idea a little too seriously, A chance to steal a toilet It was later recovered from Blenheim Palace in Britain, where it was on loan. (Since it was connected to the plumbing, the theft caused extensive damage to the 18th-century house.)

Click here to get the Fox News app

In any case, Avini said, the current show takes the idea behind the toilet “one step further where the discussion is about violence and money. Very specifically, violence with guns.” And even more specifically, the ease of obtaining guns.

Cattelan won’t get this specific information. But that doesn’t mean he’s not interested in the other pictures. When Mark Folino, an art lover from Boston, introduced himself to the artist and offered his interpretation of a long-standing divide in American society, Cattelan listened intently and called over a gallery employee.

“Take notes!” he instructed.