Toiletpaper

Zero moderation. And not a single well-considered decision. Welcome to ToiletFotoPaperGrafiska, TOILETPAPER’s hyper-visual and surreal universe at Fotografiska, that offers a labyrinth of impressions.

“It’s like if you’re invited to the best party of your life, where everybody is super drunk and you are the only sober person in the room”, TOILETPAPER founders Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari describe the experience.

Opening on March 8 at Fotografiska Stockholm, ToiletFotoPaperGrafiska is the largest European exhibition that the Italian studio TOILETPAPER has ever held.

With a shared passion for photography, absurdism, and creativity, artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari founded image-based TOILETPAPERMagazine in 2010 as a reaction to the conservative art world. Today, TOILETPAPERis known worldwide for its straightforward, colorful, and often provocative images, where a cheerful design inspired by advertising and commercialism meets dark satire and acidic social commentary.

The exhibition ToiletFotoPaperGrafiska is now having its premiere at Fotografiska Stockholm, where the magazine is transformed into a three-dimensional experience. There is no semblance of moderation, refined elegance, or careful consideration. Instead, visitors are immersed in a bizarre maze of art installations, videos, and photographic works. And let’s not forget a pool filled with thousands of fake bananas.

“The works often revolve around the absurdities of our times and the obsession with beauty, power, and consumption. The exhibition plays with human contradictions, unapologetically and without explanations, and is an experience that is both rebellious and liberated. The only thing we dare promise is that it will never be boring,” says Pauline Benthede, Global Vice President of Exhibitions at Fotografiska.

TOILETPAPER’s creativity is dynamic and in continual dialogue with both the contemporary world and audiences, with ideas that are often improvised while still being carefully crafted. They make all of the props in their creative studio in Milan and use no AI-generated effects in any of their photographs and videos.

This exhibition is full of hidden Easter egg

“We always strive to break away from the usual conventions and create a raw and personal dialogue between the viewer and the art. The exhibition at Fotografiska is full of hidden Easter eggs, images with invisible connections that we leave to the viewer to find,” says Pierpaolo Ferrari about the exhibition.

Pierpaolo Ferrari is a renowned photographer who has worked for many of the world’s most famous magazines and brands, and this year marks 15 years since he started the publication TOILETPAPER together with his ally Maurizio Cattelan, who is one of our most famous contemporary artists.

The duo has described starting each image with an idea, even a simple one, and then “a complex orchestration of people make the paintings come to life”.

“TOILETPAPER’s straightforward and direct imagery is like a visual course of penicillin in the March darkness that is impossible to avoid. With their satirical humor and eclectic aesthetic, they create a visual language rarely seen in art institutions”, says Pauline Benthede, Global Vice President of Exhibitions at Fotografiska.

ToiletFotoPaperGrafiska has its premiere at Fotografiska Stockholm on Saturday, March 8 and will run through June 8, 2025.