First-ever survey of the duo's spatial practice and the most extensive presentation in Asia to date
From a full-scale family house to a public pool, the artists present five immersive installations
SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 4, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Amorepacific Museum of Art is pleased to present Elmgreen & Dragset: Spaces.
The internationally acclaimed artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset have continually redefined exhibition-making and the ways in which art can be experienced. Presenting five distinct immersive installations—a full-scale family house, a public pool, a restaurant, an industrial kitchen, and an artist's atelier—this exhibition marks their 30th year of collaboration and their most extensive presentation in Asia to date.
Amorepacific Museum of Art presents Elmgreen & Dragset 'Spaces' (PRNewsfoto/Amorepacific Museum of Art)
Elmgreen & Dragset, Shadow House, 2024_Photo Andrea Rosetti (PRNewsfoto/Amorepacific Museum of Art)
Elmgreen & Dragset, The Amorepacific Pool, 2024_Photo Andrea Rosetti (PRNewsfoto/Amorepacific Museum of Art)
Elmgreen & Dragset, The Cloud, 2024_Photo Andrea Rosetti (PRNewsfoto/Amorepacific Museum of Art)
Elmgreen & Dragset, Untitled (the kitchen), 2024_Photo Andrea Rosetti (PRNewsfoto/Amorepacific Museum of Art)
Elmgreen & Dragset, Untitled (the studio), 2024_Photo Andrea Rosetti (PRNewsfoto/Amorepacific Museum of Art)
Michael Elmgreen (Copenhagen, Denmark; 1961-) and Ingar Dragset (Trondheim, Norway; 1969-) have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. While many of their early works directly engaged with the architecture of exhibition spaces, their practice has evolved to focus on large-scale, immersive installations that recreate familiar scenes from everyday life. By placing their artworks within these environments, they challenge conventional exhibition formats and excavate the underlying values embedded in the places and objects that shape our public and private lives. Renowned for their large-scale installations such as Prada Marfa (2005), Van Gogh's Ear (2016), the duo was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2000) and won the Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2002). They received special mention for their presentation The Collectors at the 53rd Venice Biennale and was selected for the London's Fourth Plinth Commission in 2012.
Spaces, the first-ever survey of Elmgreen & Dragset's spatial practice, presents five immersive space-specific installations that feature a combination of existing works and new works by the artists. The family house, titled Shadow House, extends the artist duo's investigation on the idea of home by presenting an actual architectural entity. The public swimming pool, the leitmotif of Elmgreen & Dragset's practice is a remark on disappearing communal civic spaces. The Cloud, the high-end restaurant may serve as a commentary on how the culinary experience are now consumed on both a sensorial and digital level. During regular opening hours, it will appear deserted except for a lifelike figure of a young woman seemingly in the middle of a FaceTime conversation. The industrial-style kitchen hints at the conversion between the kitchen and a laboratory, where molecular gastronomy gains popularity in fine dining business. The studio space shows the artists' white-lacquered figural sculptures in various poses of creative art-making.
In the sequence of spaces, the visitors are invited to wander around and discover narrative threads to piece together their own version of the story that each space is relaying. Within the myriad web of details that hint at underlying narratives, Spaces will be a place to get lost in. The Amorepacific Museum of Art hopes that our visitors will discover a unique opportunity to uncover unexpected interpretations of everyday realities.
[Exhibition Overview]
Title: Spaces
Period: September 3, 2024 (TUE) through February 23, 2025 (SUN)
Opening hours: 10:00 a.m. to 18:00 p.m. (ticket counter closes at 17:00). APMA is closed on Mondays, January 1, Seollal and Chuseok holidays
Location: Amorepacific Museum of Art (100 Hangang-daero, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Korea)
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