Michael Elmgreen (born 1961; Copenhagen, Denmark) and Ingar Dragset (born 1969; Trondheim, Norway) have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. Their work explores the relationship between art, architecture and design.
Elmgreen & Dragset live and work in Berlin. They are known for art work that has wit and subversive humour, and also addresses social and cultural concerns.[1][2]
Life and work
The duo met in Copenhagen in 1994, when Michael Elmgreen, who was born in the city in 1961, was writing and performing poetry, and Ingar Dragset, a Norwegian born in 1969, was studying theatre.[3] They started collaborating in 1995 and moved to Berlin in 1997. In 2006, they bought a large 1000m2 former water-pumping station dating to 1924 in Berlin's Neukölln borough from the city[3] and converted it into a studio.[4] In 2008, Elmgreen moved to London, and in 2015, he moved back to Berlin.[5]
Since 1997, the artists have presented a great number of architectural and sculptural installations in an ongoing series of works entitled 'Powerless Structures'[6] in which they transformed the conventions of the 'white cube' gallery space, creating galleries suspended from the ceiling, sunk into the ground or turned upside down.[7] For the Istanbul Biennial in 2001, they constructed a full-scale model of a typical Modernist Kunsthalle descending into the ground while located outdoors among ancient ruins. Their work has also been shown in the Berlin, Istanbul, Liverpool, Moscow, São Paulo, Singapore, Gwangju Biennials.
Further exhibitions include transforming the Bohen Foundation in New York into a 13th Street Subway Station in 2004; their best-known project Prada Marfa, a Prada boutique inaugurated in 2005 and sited in the middle of the Texan desert; and their exhibition The Welfare Show in 2005–2006 at Serpentine Gallery, London / The Power Plant, Toronto / Bergen Kunsthall, Norway / BAWAG Foundation, Vienna, which was critically acclaimed.[2][8][9][10]
For the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 they curated the exhibition The Collectors in the neighbouring Danish and Nordic Pavilions (which include Norway, Sweden, and Denmark), an unprecedented merging of two international exhibition venues. For their show, they invited fellow artists Maurizio Cattelan, Tom of Finland, Han & Him, Laura Horelli, William E. Jones, Terence Koh, Klara Lidén, Jonathan Monk, Nico Muhly, Norway Says, Vibeke Slyngstad, Thora Dolven Balke, Nina Saunders, and Wolfgang Tillmans, among others.
In 2011, their sculpture Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 was chosen as the winner of the Fourth Plinth Commission to be displayed on the Fourth plinth of London's Trafalgar Square.[11] Their bronze sculpture of a boy astride a rocking horse questions the tradition for war monuments to celebrate either victory or defeat.[12] The work is now permanently installed outside the Arken Museum of Modern Art.[13]
In 2013, they curated an extensive public art program in Munich entitled “A Space Called Public/Hoffentlich Öffentlich”[14] and transformed the former textile galleries of the V & A Museum into the grand family home of fictional architect Norman Swann.[15] Their exhibition series “Biography” took place in 2014–2015 at the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo and the SMK–National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen. In 2015 their exhibition “Aéroport Mille Plateaux” turned the PLATEAU Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul into an airport inspired by the ideas of philosopher Gilles Deleuze.[16]
For their solo exhibition “The Well Fair” in 2016, the duo transformed the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing into a fictional art fair.[17] Also in 2016, the artists installed Van Gogh's Ear at Rockefeller Center in New York; the 9-meter (30-foot) high, empty swimming pool stands upright on its shortest side.[18]
The artists’ first major overview in the UK, “This is How We Bite Our Tongue” was held at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 2018. The exhibition consisted of a large-scale site-specific installation and a survey of their sculptural works. The Whitechapel Pool, realised specifically for the show, transformed the ground floor of the gallery into an abandoned public swimming pool fictionally dated to 1901 and related to the gentrification of the East End of London.[19]
In 2019, Elmgreen & Dragset held their first major solo exhibition in the United States: “Sculptures” at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Later that year, they installed a new public sculpture, “Bent Pool”, located in Miami Beach's Pride Park, which takes the shape of a large swimming pool arching backwards to form an inverted U shape.
In Finland, the artist duo transformed the premises of EMMA – Espoo Museum of Art, into a surreal carpark environment for their exhibition “2020”, which coincided with the 25th year of Elmgreen & Dragset's collaboration. Later that year, “The Hive” was inaugurated at the new Moynihan Hall Train Hall in Penn Station, New York. Suspended from the ceiling, “The Hive” is an upside-down, fictional cityscape illuminated by lights that will hang permanently above the 31st Street Mid-block Entrance Hall in New York City.
The following year, The Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation invited Elmgreen & Dragset to create a public sculpture for the Royal Djurgården Parks in Stockholm. “Life Rings”, a towering sculpture made up of interlocking, stainless steel life rings, now stands at 7.5 meters (25ft) high by the waterside of the public park. In 2021, the artists also received the 14th Robert Jacobsen Prize from the Würth Foundation, in Künzelsau, Germany. To celebrate the award a solo exhibition was held at the collection's Würth Museum 2 in Künzelsau.
More recently, Elmgreen & Dragset's extensive exhibition “Useless Bodies?” was held at Fondazione Prada in Milan through Spring and Summer of 2022. Spanning more than 3,000 square meters, the exhibition drew focus to the status of the human body in today's digitally saturated, post-industrial world, looking at our working conditions, living modes and the health and leisure industries. In winter 2022, the artist duo will open their forthcoming exhibition “After Dark” at By Art Matters Museum in Hangzhou, China.
Permanent installations
Prada-1346603 1280
In 2003, Elmgreen & Dragset won the German Government's competition for a memorial in Tiergarten park in Berlin, in memory of the gay victims of the Nazi regime, which was unveiled in May 2008.[20][21]
Several of their sculptures are now permanently installed for the public including their commission for the Fourth plinth, now outside the Arken Museum of Modern Art; Prada Marfa (2005), on the U.S. Highway 90 in Texas; Dilemma, a site-specific sculpture of a boy on a high diving board overlooking a fjord on the outskirts of Oslo and Han, a polished steel sculpture of a young man on a rock located in the centre of the harbor in Helsingør, Denmark.[22]Han was installed in 2012 and is based on Edvard Eriksen's famous The Little Mermaid (statue). The figure sits in a similar pose, challenging conventional portrayals of masculinity.[23]
In 2012 Elmgreen & Dragset were also selected for London's Fourth Plinth Commission in Trafalgar Square, where they created Powerless Structures, Fig. 101. Since then, Elmgreen & Dragset have realized: Van Gogh's Ear, first presented by Public Art Fund at the Rockefeller Center in 2016 and since exhibited with K11 Musea in Hong Kong and Wuhan; Bent Pool (2019) in Pride Park, Miami Beach; The Hive (2020), welcoming visitors to Moynihan Train Hall in Penn Station, New York; and most recently, Life Rings at Royal Djurgården, Stockholm (2021).
Performative works
In 2007, Elmgreen & Dragset developed Drama Queens, a theatre play about 20th-century art history with six remote-controlled versions of iconic sculptures, for Skulptur Projekte Münster.[24] During the 2008 Frieze Art Fair, they staged Drama Queens, this time enlivened by the voices of leading stage stars such as Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes, at The Old Vic in London.[25]
2012 – Carl Nielsen og Anne Marie Carl-Nielsens Legat/Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Grant, awarded in conjunction with an exhibition at Den Frie in Copenhagen[30]
Biography (reader), Elmgreen & Dragset, Gunnar B. Kvaran and Kjersti Solbakken, eds. (Berlin: Archive Books, 2014). ISBN9783943620184
A Space Called Public, Elmgreen & Dragset, eds. (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2013). ISBN9783863354398
Elmgreen & Dragset: Trilogy, Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin, eds., exh. cat., ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011). ISBN9783865609083
ARKEN Museum of Modern Art is a state-authorised private non-profit charity and contemporary art museum in Ishøj, near Copenhagen. The museum is among Denmark's major contemporary and modern art collections, holding a variety of international cultural works and exhibitions. The museum was designed by Søren Robert Lund and was authorised by Copenhagen County. It was inaugurated on 15 March 1996 and was conceived by Queen Margrethe.
Per Kirkeby was a Danish painter, poet, film maker and sculptor. His works have been exhibited worldwide and are represented in many important public collections, including the Tate, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou.
Matthias Weischer is a German painter living in Leipzig. He is considered to be part of the New Leipzig School.
Torben Giehler is a German abstract artist.
Adam Saks is a Danish painter who lives and works in Berlin.
Bethan Huws is a Welsh multi-media artist whose work explores place, identity, and translation, often using architecture and text. Her work has been described as "delicate, unobtrusive interventions into architectural spaces".
Jeppe Hein is an artist based in Berlin and Copenhagen. His interactive sculptures and installations combine elements of humour with the 1970s traditions of minimalism and conceptual art.
Bo Christian Larsson is a Swedish artist who works mostly with large-sized drawings, installations, performances and objects.
Rainer Fetting is a German painter and sculptor.
Ian McKeever is a contemporary British artist. Since 1990 McKeever has lived and worked in Hartgrove, Dorset, England.
Astrid Kruse Jensen is a Danish photographer and visual artist. She studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in the Netherlands and the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Her artistic work is often characterized by its dreamy qualities, blurring the boundaries between memory, consciousness, reality, and illusion.
Prada Marfa is a permanent sculptural art installation by artists Elmgreen & Dragset, located along U.S. Route 90 in Jeff Davis County, Texas, United States, 1.4 miles (2.3 km) northwest of Valentine, and about 26 miles (42 km) northwest of Marfa. The installation, in the form of a freestanding building—specifically a Prada storefront—was inaugurated on October 1, 2005. The artists described the work as a "pop architectural land art project."
Nicolai Howalt is a Danish visual artist and contemporary photographer.
A K Dolven is a Norwegian artist. She works across painting, film, sound, sculpture and interventions in public space.
Christian Lemmerz is a German-Danish sculptor and visual artist who attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara, Italy, from 1978 to 1982 and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1988. Despite classical sculpture training in Carrara, Lemmerz drew his main inspiration from the post-war process-oriented pop art, not least from his fellow countryman, Joseph Beuys.
Sophia Kalkau is a Danish artist, who works in a variety of media including writing, photography, sculpture and installation. Sophia Kalkau has studied Art History at Copenhagen University and holds a degree in Art Theory from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She is the author of numerous publications on aesthetics.
Tony Matelli is an American sculptor, who has gained recognition for his hyper-realistic artworks, which utilize various techniques and materials. One of his best known works is Sleepwalker.
Katharina Grosse is a German visual artist. She is known for her large-scale, site-related installations to create immersive visual experiences. Grosse's work employs a use of architecture, sculpture and painting. She has been using an industrial paint-sprayer to apply prismatic swaths of color to a variety of surfaces since the late 1990s, and often uses bright, unmixed sprayed-on acrylic paints to create both large-scale sculptural elements and smaller wall works.
Sofie Hesselholdt and Vibeke Mejlvang are a collaborative duo of visual artists who live and work in Copenhagen. They started collaborating in late 1999 and work with performance art and site-specific installations in public spaces addressing social and political topics such as National Identity and Eurocentrism.
References
↑ Holzwarth, Hans W. (2009). 100 Contemporary Artists A-Z (Taschen's 25th anniversary specialed.). Köln: Taschen. p.164. ISBN978-3-8365-1490-3.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
