Elmgreen & Dragset

Elmgreen & Dragset
2015
Born	Elmgreen (1961) and Dragset (1969)

Michael Elmgreen (born 1961) and Ingar Dragset (born 1969) are an artist duo making work known for its subversive humour and wit, while simultaneously addressing social and cultural concerns. They have been working together since 1995. They live and work in Berlin.

Background

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Michael Elmgreen was born in 1961 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Ingar Dragset was born in 1969 in Trondheim, Norway. They met in Copenhagen in 1994. At this time, Elmgreen, who was born in the city in 1961, was writing and performing poetry. Dragset, who was born in 1969 in Norway, was studying theatre.

In 1995, Elmgreen and Dragset started collaborating.

In 1997, they moved to Berlin. In 2006, the duo bought a large 1000m² former water-pumping station (dating from 1924) in Berlin's Neukölln and converted it into a studio. In 2008, Elmgreen moved to London, and in 2015, he moved back to Berlin.

Career

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Since 1997, the artists have presented a great number of architectural and sculptural installations in an ongoing series of works entitled 'Powerless Structures' 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. 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.

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. Their bronze sculpture of a boy astride a rocking horse questions the tradition for war monuments to celebrate either victory or defeat. The work is now permanently installed outside the Arken Museum of Modern Art.

In 2013, they curated an extensive public art program in Munich entitled “A Space Called Public/Hoffentlich Öffentlich” and transformed the former textile galleries of the V & A Museum into the grand family home of fictional architect Norman Swann. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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 (25 ft) 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.

In 2015, the duo were awarded an honorary doctorate by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Permanent installations

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.

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. 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.

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 Archived 2020-08-10 at the Wayback Machine, 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).

Other activities

In 2019, Dragset was a member of the jury that chose Lawrence Abu Hamdan for the Edvard Munch Art Award.

Awards

Art market

Elmgreen & Dragset are represented by Pace Gallery (since 2020), Helga de Alvear, Kukje Gallery, Massimo De Carlo, Victoria Miro Gallery, Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Perrotin, and Taka Ishii Gallery. They previously worked with Johann König until 2022.

Exhibitions

Collections

Elmgreen & Dragset's work is in the permanent collection of several museums across the world including:

Commissions

• Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, Mayor of London's Fourth Plinth Commission, Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, 2012
• Han commissioned by city of Helsingør, the sculpture installed in the center of the harbor basin as a protagonist in Kulturhavn Kronborg, 2012
• Louis Vuitton New Bond Street Maison and Louis Vuitton Librairie, London, 2012
• Van Gogh's Ear, Rockefeller Center, New York, 2016
• To Whom It May Concern, FIAC HORS LES MURS, Place Vendôme, Paris, 2018
• Zero, East Asiatic, Bangkok Art Biennale, 2018
• The Hive, Moynihan Train Hall, New York, United States, 2020
• Life Rings, Royal Djurgården, Stockholm, Sweden, 2021

Catalogues

• Useless Bodies? (Milan: Nava Press, 2022). ISBN 9788887029802
• The Nervous System (New York: Pace, 2021). ISBN 9781948701488
• Elmgreen & Dragset: Sculptures (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2019). ISBN 9783775746229
• Elmgreen & Dragset (London: Phaidon, 2019). ISBN 9780714875712
• This Is How We Bite Our Tongue (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2018). ISBN 9780854882656
• 15th Istanbul Biennial: a good neighbour: Exhibition and Stories (Istanbul: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and the Arts, 2017). ISBN 9786055275372
• Die Zugezogenen (London: Koenig Books, 2017). ISBN 9783960981930
• The Others (Berlin: König Galerie / London: Koenig Books, 2017). ISBN 9783960980698
• The Well Fair, Elmgreen & Dragset (London: Koenig Books / Beijing: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 2016). ISBN 9783863358952
• Aéroport Mille Plateaux, Elmgreen & Dragset (Seoul: PLATEAU, Samsung Museum of Art, 2015). ISBN 9788985468527
• Biography, Elmgreen & Dragset (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2014). ISBN 9783775738651
• Biography (reader), Elmgreen & Dragset, Gunnar B. Kvaran and Kjersti Solbakken, eds. (Berlin: Archive Books, 2014). ISBN 9783943620184
• A Space Called Public, Elmgreen & Dragset, eds. (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2013). ISBN 9783863354398
• Elmgreen & Dragset: Trilogy, Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin, eds., exh. cat., ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011). ISBN 9783865609083
• Elmgreen & Dragset: Performances: 1995-2011, Anita Iannacchione, ed. (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011). ISBN 9783863350994
• Elmgreen & Dragset: This is the First Day of My Life, Anna Stüler, ed. (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008). ISBN 9783775720502
• Home is the Place You Left, Elmgreen & Dragset, Trondheim Kunstmuseum (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2008). ISBN 9783865604736
• Prada Marfa, Elmgreen & Dragset (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007). No longer in print. ISBN 9783865601957
• The Welfare Show, Elmgreen & Dragset (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2006). No longer in print. ISBN 9783883759678
• Taking Place, Beatrix Ruf, ed., exh. cat. Kunsthalle Zürich (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2002). No longer in print. ISBN 9783775711562
• Zwischen anderen Ereignissen, exh. cat. (Leipzig: Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, 2000). No longer in print.
• Powerless Structures exh. cat. (1998). No longer in print.

Gallery

• 
  Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism by Elmgreen and Dragset
• 
  The unveiling of the memorial, 2008, 27 May
• 
  The signboard
• 
  The video in the memorial

References

Further reading

• Searle, Adrian (31 October 2008). "Elmgreen and Dragset: Private view with Adrian Searle". The Guardian. London: Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 2009-02-08. (Podcast)
• Video interview with Elmgreen and Dragset, on the occasion of their 2011 exhibition 'The One & The Many' in Rotterdam (NL)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Elmgreen & Dragset.

• Official website