Bananas and martinis: Inside Toiletpaper magazine’s surreal exhibition opening dinner at Fotografiska

To walk into the Toiletpaper exhibition at Fotografiska in Stockholm is to enter a fever dream. Moving through a maze-like corridor where vibrant images are splashed on walls from floor-to-ceiling, one is treated to the trippy experience of diving into an issue of Toiletpaper magazine, the beloved project conceived by artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari in 2010. And speaking of diving, move further into the exhibition and one finds a pool of plastic bananas – a cheeky nod to Cattelan’s infamous duct tape banana sculpture.

Things got more surreal, still, at Friday’s dinner to fete the exhibition opening. For the occasion, Toiletpaper linked up with Oatly to throw a surreal banquet that started with a monstrous tiered cake and ended with dry martinis. The Instagram-friendly menu came courtesy of food artist Alex Paganelli, better known as DeadHungry, with the support of Fotografiska’s head chef Christophe Buchet. Afterwards, guests danced the night away to funky tunes by Swedish DJ Axel Boman and took a tentative dip in the banana pool.

Dubbed ToiletFotoPaperGrafiska, it’s Toiletpaper’s most ambitious exhibition in Europe to date, but Ferrari and Cattelan weren’t thinking of museums when they conceived of the project. “When we started Toiletpaper Magazine, we said, let’s try not go in the gallery,” says Ferrari, who was in town for the opening. “The gallery is a pretty stressful world, and Maurizio said, ‘Let’s have more fun, more collaboration, something more dynamic.” Besides, Cattelan, one of the most renowned living artists, had already conquered the gallery and museum circuit.

Linking up with Fotografiska, however, just felt right. After all, this is a magazine comprised entirely of carefully staged photos – a notion that’s sometimes lost on people scrolling past the images on Instagram. “Sometimes people think that our work is more like graphic design – computer art,” says Ferrari.

He makes a good point; many of the images – the fluffy cat stuffed between to burger buns, the red rose dripping with paint – are so vibrant and uncanny, they could easily be mistaken as AI. But no, every photo is meticulously realised by Cattelan and Ferrari, cast with characters they meet on the street or pals hanging around the studio. “These are real people with interesting faces – not necessarily models – it’s the most fun part of it,” says Ferrari. “People are wondering why they are there, because they’ve been taken from the street.”

Ferrari and Cattelan first linked up about 25 years ago. Cattelan needed some portraits taken and reached out to Ferrari, who was already the go-to portrait guy for the late Franca Sozzani. “Probably because I’m good at working people with strong personalities,” says Ferrari. “I put them in a good vibe and I make them feel confident.” The first time Cattelan and Ferrari worked together was to shoot the cover of W magazine’s art issue, in which Linda Evangelista, with a pained expression, holds a cardboard sign that reads “It must be somebody’s fault”.

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Though Toiletpaper has entered the museum, it’s still a creative outlet conceived by two great friends; an opportunity to play around and provoke the viewer. “For Maurizio, when he conceives an artwork it takes one or two years to make – it’s a tough process,” says Ferrari. “I think him, more than me, needs something easy. A way to play with concepts that’s very fast.” As for the highlight of the exhibition, I asked the most important critic, Ferrari’s six-year-old daughter, India, who joined him at the opening. “I like the bananas,” she says, definitively, before going to take a swim.