Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. They have transformed the Kunsthalle into a building site, where the ongoing construction of a "permanent Installation" of their work represents a future display situation at the Kunsthalle. Taking Place reveals the space of art as a temporary work in progress, geared towards the specific creation of rooms for the presentation of art.
Michael Elmgreen (Denmark, 1961) and Ingar
Dragset (Norway, 1969) have been a team since
1995. In their work, which includes
performances, objects, and installations, they
examine the socio-cultural structures
manifested in art and society. Since 1997, they
have been working on a consecutively
numbered series of Powerless Structures which
makes use of two neutralities: the supposed
neutrality of a minimalist formal vocabulary in
architecture and art, and that of the color white.
The institutionalized container for art, the White
Cube, neutral and yet exceedingly charged with
ideological implications, takes center stage in
their investigations because they are "artists"
and because the cube represents the space of
social presence officially allotted to them. Their
spatial structures and objects guilefully expose
the blind spots in assumptions of the Cube's
formal autonomy and neutrality by introducing
sexual and paradoxical elements or juxtaposing
inside and outside or private and public, not as
ideological opposites but rather as issues under
debate. They do not focus on the "building" as
such, but rather on the process of building as a
process of generating meaning and a forum for
discussing the premises which apply to both
artists and users.
Process again prevails in Taking Place, the
project created by the two artists for the
Kunsthalle Zürich. They have transformed the
Kunsthalle into a building site, where the
ongoing construction of a "permanent
Installation" of their work represents a future
display situation at the Kunsthalle. Taking Place
reveals the space of art as a temporary work in
progress, geared towards the specific creation
of rooms for the presentation of art. For the
duration of the exhibition, doors are opened to a
"behind-the-scenes" scenario. We see offices
being moved, walls being torn down and built,
the details of construction, the suspended state
of administrative reorganization in the
non-public spaces of art, and the public spaces
of art presentation prior to their renewed
accessibility as such.
The project includes an ongoing discourse on
the use of the Kunsthalle, the ever growing
diversity of needs which spaces of art are
expected to satisfy, the way in which the use of
rooms may influence or even constitute their
form, and what the representation of objects in
rooms actually means. As artists, Michael
Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset put their solo
exhibition, the duration of their presence in the
museum, at the disposal of their host. By so
doing, they also address the significance of
working individuals and bodies, of professional
responsibilities and capabilities, and an open
process for the formulation of art.
Kunsthalle Zurich
Limmatstrasse 270 8005 Zurigo t 01 2721515 f 01 2721888
Hours
Tuesday - Friday 12 to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday 11 - 5 p.m. Closed Mondays