Elmgreen & Dragset

Exhibition period: 19 September 2014 to 4 January 2015

The Danish-Norwegian artists’ duo Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset surprise us, shock us, and turn the world upside down in their art, which will be featured in a major exhibition at SMK in 2014.

Elmgreen & Dragset are major stars on the international contemporary art scene. The exhibition at SMK will sum up and present central movements and developments in the duo’s extensive body of work from 1995 to the present day.

Joint career – sculpture, installation art, and performance art

Elmgreen & Dragset are based in Berlin and London. The two artists have worked together since 1995. At the outset of their joint career they frequently worked with performance art, often addressing issues pertaining to homosexuality. They also began working with larger sculptures and installation pieces under the common heading Powerless Structures, a title they have repeatedly returned ever since. For example, the work Please, keep quit! – featured in SMK’s permanent exhibition Danish and International Art after 1900 – sees Elmgreen & Dragset exploring what happens when a replica hospital ward is placed in the middle of an art institution. In their works Elmgreen & Dragset play with our expectations by staging paradoxical, seemingly misplaced scenarios that challenge our habitual notions, often to startling and shocking effect. 

More about Please, keep quiet!

International artists’ duo

Elmgreen & Dragset have attracted attention far beyond the borders of Norway and Denmark, staging numerous exhibitions in art institutions all across the world – including the Serpentine Gallery and Tate Modern in London and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. In 2009 they represented Denmark and Norway at the Venice Biennial, and in 2012 they exhibited their work at the Liverpool Biennial. Now, the internationally acclaimed artists’ duo will stage their largest-ever exhibition on Danish soil at SMK.