Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli isn’t known for holding back in his work. He has cast superstar actors, actresses, and directors in fake movie trailers and political campaign ads, created a perfume that smells like "greed," put Nicki Minaj in a baroque dress for W Magazine, and had Lady Gaga play a piano painted by Damien Hirst. In fact, most of Vezzoli’s oeuvre has been star-studded (which is why it’s surprising to hear him complain that he is “tiring of working with stars” in a recent interview with the Guardian.)

Yet the artist’s latest proposal for a 24-hour-only pop-up museum, still carries the reflected shine of celebrity, despite its posture of institutional critique. Vezzoli will take over Paris’s Palais d'Iéna (the exact date is still TBA), filling it with 16-foot-tall neoclassical figures topped by the heads of celebrities he has worked with, including Courtney Love and Cate Blanchett. The Palais d’Iéna was originally built as a museum, but currently hosts France’s social, economic, and environmental councils. Vezzoli will kick out the government for a day and install his own version of a museum, featuring an institution with its own press conferences and student tours during the day that transforms into a fully functioning nightclub in the evening. In its final three hours, the museum will throw a public party. 

Vezzoli’s 24-hour museum could be just another spectacle, but the artist sees it as a parody of institutional integrity compromised by money (Vezzoli’s museum, as with several other of his projects, is sponsored by Prada). “[Cultural institutions] have gone from being small and protected to being big and less protected,” Vezzoli said. “The only institutions that aren't for rent are the private ones because people like Prada don't need the money.” The artist balances on the line between over-the-top kitsch and pointed critique — though he doesn’t always fall on the side he intends to. In a 2010 interview Vezzoli told ARTINFO, “I have given up trying to claim a political aspect to my work. I leave it to others to judge.”

For Vezzoli, the takeover is “a parody of a retrospective.” "If you're setting up this whole extravaganza and make it completely self-referential, you become the object of the ridiculousness,” the artist told the Guardian. The comment seems to be a thinly veiled jibe at Maurizio Cattelan, whose hanging Guggenheim retrospective seemed to descend into pure self-collapsing parody on its own.

Franceso Vezzoli's "24 h Museum" will run from January 24 to 25 at the Palais d’Iéna