ELMGREEN & DRAGSET. Friends
View of the exhibition. Courtesy: Helga de Alvear gallery.
The Story behind the Plot
The relationship between private and public spaces and gay identity is one of the recurrent themes of the work of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Their works are displayed to the world intensifying the experience created in the face of an environment which gives rise to a certain sense of uncertainty among the silent witnesses that are the viewers, who are left with the only choice of wondering whether the scene goes beyond the obvious trial to which its visitors are subjected. Is there, therefore anything more that the obvious identitarian interpretation?
In their work it is frequent to find a certain suspension of the very mechanisms of the art system, especially the idea of the white cube which has run in parallel to social issues, as was clearly seen in theirPowerless Structures and in several performative practices, such as the celebrated “real estate” walk through the Scandinavian pavilions of the 2009 Venice Biennial. They are also known fro their replica of the Prada store in the middle of the Texas desert, but, in shows such as the one which is on display at the Helga de Alvear gallery, it seems that what prevails is the ambiguity between nostalgia and desire, as happened with Trying to Remember… at the MUSAC, now staged at a meeting place such as a sauna, which could reveal a narrative behind the first confrontation between the personal and collective.
These classy provocateurs, immaculate executors, establish a dialectic between human behaviour and social spaces such as museums, parks, boutiques… where the traces of what has happened become the work itself. They undoubtedly take as a starting point the gay universe, as has often been the case since their Cruising Pavilion, and their installation for the 2006 Gwangju Biennial, but some events seems to expand this context, especially when we discover the lifeless body floating in the pool. A bad encounter?
The Forbidden Colour, by Yukio Mishima, and the shoes and socks neatly placed next to the pool –a ritual gesture which precedes suicide in Japanese culture—seem to hint at a voluntary death. The book which recounts the twisted thoughts and ploys of the misogynisticShunsuké Hinoki directs us toward Japan’s gay scene, but also tells us about the heartbroken revenge of the young Yasuko.
Homosexuality is thus interwoven in this sauna with the appropriation of a classic operetta world which is now recreated as kitsch decoration, from which to activate acertain sense of sarcasm, from its urinals –used more than once to discuss marriage or promiscuity– to the sculpture of a woundedHercules, who now recovers with the blood and care of the strange hospital where we find him.
Simultaneously to this exhibition, in Karlsruhe they reflect on fame with Celebrity - The One & The Many, where notoriety and morbid interests serve to journey through their work, as they question so many social mechanisms where they are the celebrities that one feels excluded from, in included in, an exclusive group. However, a retrospective like this one and an exhibition like Friendsseems not only to build a consistent and striking universe, but also offers glimpses of the suspicion suggested by its architectures. Kathryn Smith commented that “appreciating the magnitude of space is impossible if we are not aware of the importance of the echo”, and something similar happens in the works of Elmgreen & Dragset, as if they heralded the depth of a scenography which goes beyond its overwhelming spectacular nature.
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