Although diminutive in size and designed for locations that are easy to overlook, Cattelan’s animatronic sculpture of a small boy announces its presence by pounding on a toy drum. Sitting precariously on the edge of a roof or ledge with its legs dangling high above the ground, the drummer boy expands the artist’s repeated imagery of a child in danger or subject to violence by directly referring to Günter Grass’s novel "Die Blechtrommel" (The Tin Drum, 1959), which was adapted into a film directed by Volker Schlöndorff in 1979.
Earlier series have been exhibited at major institutions such as the Ludwig Museum in Cologne (2003), the Musée du Louvre (2004), the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2011), Fondazione Prada in Venice (2014), La Monnaie de Paris (2017), and most recently at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul (2023).
Grass’s novel narrates the fantastic story of Oskar Matzerath, a boy who has willed himself to stop growing while the world around him falls apart in the period around World War II. His strange attachment to the drum that he plays incessantly is the novel’s central leitmotif and one of its most ambivalent symbols. Oskar drums impulsively when fearful or confronted with danger, but in one key episode he also disrupts a Nazi rally with a seductive rhythm. With the disquieting sound of a solitary but empathic drumbeat, Cattelan’s sculpture suggests the equally subversive and ominous qualities of Oskar’s drumming.