©ROBERTO CUOGHI/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH/ALESSANDRA SOFIA
Roberto Cuoghi is now represented by Hauser & Wirth gallery, which has locations in New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong as well as England (London and Somerset) and Switzerland (Zurich, St. Moritz, and Gstaad). Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris will continue to represent Cuoghi, while Lehmann Maupin, of New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul, will no longer work with the artist.
Hauser & Wirth will showcase recent sculptures by Cuoghi at its ADAA Art Show booth in New York next week. On view will be works from Cuoghi’s series “Putiferio” and “Ether en Flocons,” both of which involve subjecting animal figures to extreme temperatures. Cuoghi’s first solo show with the gallery will follow later this year in New York.
Cuoghi, who is based in Milan, made his name in the 1990s and 2000s with works that involved modifying his body to perform various tasks. For a project begun in 1998, Cuoghi transformed himself into his father. By the end of that work, he weighed 308 pounds, with gray hair and sunken eyes. Recent work has dealt with reproductions of centuries-old artifacts and the relationship between nature and art-making.
In 2017 Cuoghi was one of three artists representing Italy at the Venice Biennale. His work has also appeared in editions of the Gwangju Biennale and the Berlin Biennale, and was the subject of a mid-career survey that began at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève in Switzerland and also made stops at the Madre Museum in Naples and the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Germany. In 2009 he received a special mention from the Venice Biennale’s jury.
In a statement, Marc Payot, a partner and vice president of Hauser & Wirth, called Cuoghi “a true artist’s artist,” continuing, “Cuoghi is already a legend among serious collectors and among his peers, and now our objective is to engage the widest possible audience in his ideas and work. While it’s impossible to draw direct parallels between Cuoghi and other artists, his attitude of full immersion and total commitment to his work resonate with many other artists in our program.”