Elmgreen & Dragset

Since 1995, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have created large-scale sculptures, installations and performances that douse new twists on modernist design in pointed social commentary. All of their work, whether a thirty-foot defunct swimming pool or a fictional set of a collector’s home, transforms familiar settings into humorous, uncanny scenarios. Public space is highly important. The conversations that the sculptures provoke within the public are just as important as the art-objects themselves. In fact, Elmgreen & Dragset see their work as a mode of civic duty, aiming to inspire independent thought in their viewers. They do not, however, ask you to agree with them, but instead pose questions that undo the absoluteness of societal norms to reveal - beyond what we are conditioned to believe - what we actually think.

Elmgreen & Dragset hold up an absurdist mirror to the art world. Their 2008 solo show, Too Late, was based on a real-life anecdote: at Art Basel the pair were denied entry to their own after party because it was so exclusive. In the exhibition, the gallery was transformed into a nightclub called ‘The Mirror.’ Before the opening, the artists’ hosted a private party. Instead of tidying it’s aftermath, the debris was left out so that, when the show opened, curators, collectors and gallerists were forced to tiptoe around discarded litter. Exemplary of the duos oeuvre, the piece uses brash humour as a mode of critique, questioning the exclusiveness not only of the art world, but consumerism and materialism at large.