The Danish-Norwegian duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have been ranking among the internationally mostly demanded artists during the last ten years. Dealing with conventional patterns of perception, Elmgreen & Dragset reveal their work in the intermediate zone between art, architecture and design, using a variety of media. Their objects, performances, installations in space and environment result from ideological meanings which present areas of life where social power is exerted on the individual. Having become sensitive by watching the world from the gay artist couple`s angle in a middle class urban society, Elmgreen & Dragset precisely analyse conventional premises and patterns in social life. In an ironical way and with a touching easiness, they demonstrate how the white and heterosexually dominated society exerts control. They don`t show their social criticism by an expressive rebel, but by subtly infiltrating the frozen parameters of the younger art history, like the complex-ridden term “showroom” and its myths of modern age.
By its minimal aesthetics, Elmgreen & Dragset`s oeuvre does not only remind of the art movement of the sixties and seventies. Following the theatrical aspect of minimal art, this oeuvre deliberately forces a performative moment, too. The American art historian Michael Fried criticises the “Theatricality” as the weak point of the usually so straight art school of minimal art. By means of the series Powerless Structures, the artists exploit that minimal art good and proper. Powerless Structures, as the artist duo (favouring the colour white) calls a numbered series, circle round the theme “White Cube” and consequently question its “powerful structure” if being apt for a canonized, presumably neutral location of presentation. In their projects, Elmgreen & Dragset reanimate, even sexualize the modernized relict “White Cube”; they inspire the places of art with eroticism and life, with the aid of targeted performative operation.
Works (selection):
Cruising Pavilion / Powerless Structures, Fig. 55 (1998) is a simple white container, a pavilion, set up by Elmgreen & Dragset as a meeting place for gays in a public park in the Danish town Århus. The labyrinthine structure created individual rooms. Holes in the walls, so-called „gloryholes“, allow a peep as well as the physical contact of penetration. In this work, Elmgreen & Dragset link smooth, white and straight minimalist elements with elements from a sub-culture, in this case the sex meetings. In works like this or Queer Bar (1998), they deal with the fact, that the gay society was usually forced to transform locations meant for other purposes (public toilets, baths, parks) into intimate rooms.
Powerless Structures, Fig. 44 (1998): For the exhibition Junge Szene 1998 (Young Scene 1998) in the Wiener Secession, Elmgreen & Dragset installed a glass cube whose walls they continually painted – from within – in white colour, then cleaned them again, performing that action during the opening of the exhibition. Being a room in the room, this work points at the main room of the Wiener Secession, the first “White Cube” in exhibition history. In addition to the hint that the white cell be the ideal room for exhibitions, caused by its performative variable quality, the work offers a broad field of associations. The American art historian Bill Arning, for example, interprets this live installation as allegory to a gay Jack-off-Party, understanding the colour splashes as masculine ejaculations.
Linienstrasse 160 (Neue Mitte) (2005): Elmgreen & Dragset deduce this title from the site of their latest exhibition, the old Galerie Klosterfeld. As unspectacular as this title, the work presents itself as the simple return of the gallery rooms to their original use: a passage to a backyard. Renovated with discrete elegance and equipped with all-day props typical for the young inhabitants of Neue Mitte in Berlin (a trendy designer pram and an expensive brand-name bike) this site describes the rapid change of a former east district into a kind of ghetto for Berlin`s young upper class.
The Welfare Show (2005) is to be understood as an abstract artistic position to current omnipresent debates on reforming the future of social security systems. This touring project started in the Art Gallery Bergen (Norway) in spring and can be seen all over the year, slightly modified, first in the BAWAG Foundation, Vienna, then in The Power Plant, Toronto. It gets down to the central establishments of our society. In Bergen, for example, the Art Gallery`s entrance area imitates a multinational company, in the following rooms the visitor finds himself in a sterile hospital and in the departure lounge of an airport. Elmgreen & Dragset displace entire institutions – like readymades – into an artistic context. They question those institutions` social meanings and structures by offering a different angle at each spot of the exhibition.
Profile:
Michael Elmgreen: Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1961 / Ingar Dragset: Born in Trondheim, Norway, in 1969. They live and work in Berlin. Since 1995, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset have been forming a life and working partnership. Since 1997, they have been working on their series Powerless Structures. In 2002, they were awarded the „Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst“ in Berlin for the project The Welfare Show. Elmgreen & Dragset`s works have been bought by major public and private collections all over the world.
Exhibitions (selection):
Solo Exhibitions: 2005 Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen; BAWAG Foundation, Vienna; The Power Plant, Toronto; Wrong Gallery, New York / 2004 Sprengel Museum, Hanover; Tate Modern, London; Museum Folkwang, Essen / 2003 Portikus, Frankfurt/Main; Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen / 2002 Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan; Sala Montcada/Fondaciò La Caixa, Barcelona / 2001 Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; Klosterfelde, Berlin / 2000 Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig / 1999 The Project, New York.
Group Exhibitions: 2005 Kiss the Frog. The Art of Transformation, Oslo Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Oslo; Universal Experience, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago / 2004 Modus Operandi, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Artists' Favourites, ICA - Institute for Contemporary Art, London / 2003 Utopia Station, 50th Biennale di Venezia, Venice; Living Inside The Grid, New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York; nation, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt/Main; Happiness, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Das Lebendige Museum, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main / 2002 25th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo; Beyond Paradise, National Art Gallery, Bangkok; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Shopping, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/Main / 2001 Egofugal, 7th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul; Inside Space, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA / 2000 Borderline Syndrome, Manifesta 3, Ljubljana; What If..., Moderna Museet, Stockholm / 1998 Berlin/Berlin, Berlin Biennale, Berlin; Junge Szene, Wiener Secession, Vienna; Nuit Blanche, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris.
Publications (selection):
Cream 3. Contemporary Art in Culture, London/New York 2003, p. 128-131; Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset: Taking Place, Beatrix Ruf (ed.), Kunsthalle Zürich/Hatje Cantz, Zurich/Ostfildern-Ruit 2002; Daniel Birnbaum, "White on white. The Art of Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset", in: Artforum International, April 2002, number. 8, p. 98-101.
Illustrations:
Powerless Structures, Fig. 44 (Mal-Performance Wien), 1998, photo: Pez Hejduk, courtesy: Elmgreen & Dragset;
The Welfare Show, 2005, photo: Wolfgang Wössner, courtesy: BAWAG Foundation. |
