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Maurizio Cattelan Turned This Years RenBen Gala into a Silent Party

Silence was the shared medium in a sprawling collective performance that unfolded across two floors of the Chicago Athletic Association in support of Renaissance Society's mission.

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.”

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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........

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