A big fan of Bright Eyes he is
He's done an 'Opening Soon' gallery that confused the hell out of those Chelsea New Yorkers, a gallery hoisted by two black balloons, a sunken building, and let's not forget the Prada Marfa! SUPERSWEET's Tiffany Tondut chats to her hero Michael Elmgreen, installation artist and one half of the Elmgreen & Dragset collective, about the works acoss the span of their career.
SS: Michael, in ‘95, you began collaborating with Norwegian performance artist Ingar Dragset and as a duo, gone on to secure highly prestigious awards, such as the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst in Berlin. Did Ingar dramatically impact on your working life and artistic vision? Was this the sudden genesis of ‘Elmgreen and Dragset: the visionary installation duo’ that post-modern art reveres today, or was the relationship much slower in developing its artistic potency?
Prada Marfa, 2005
Michael: Neither Ingar or me have any proper art education and the main reason for starting to work together was that we had met one year before and were boyfriends. To be honest we just wanted to have fun. The more serious turn in our career happened after moving to Berlin some years later. In a ‘Scandie’ context we were considered complete losers since the scene up there was rather macho and only focused on f***ing back then. We were a gay couple who did performances! It was almost suicidal. Even the first years in Berlin were a bit tough. We came to an opening and everybody but us were dressed in white shirts, nerdy black glasses (like those that are back in fashion again today) and worn out black-suit shoes - and we arrived in our hoodies and sneakers - that made the gallery ask us if we were just coming to the show to get free beer. It was very German avant-garde old-school in Berlin 10 years ago. Strange how fast this city has changed.
SS: Your last known collaboration on British soil was The Welfare Show at the Serpentine Gallery back in 2006. Can you talk a little about where you’ve been since then and what you’ve been working on?
Social Mobility, 2005
SS: You’ve worked and exhibited in varying differing countries from Iceland to Australia. Does your voice travel, or do you create art in response to that particular country’s geo-political environment?
Michael: Sometimes we work site specific, sometimes not. We don't want to hook up to a local situation if there’s nothing there that we find interesting for ourselves. Other times it feels natural to include or comment on some of the social structures that are already present but our working methods are consequently changing all the time. I find "social engagement as an artistic logo" - this idea of being a political artist who per se finds social issues to relate to in every project - doing more harm than good since the social topics then become pure aesthetics.
Birthday, 2002 and Socks at Woolworths, 2006
SS: I read that Tracy Emin was nervous of participating in Venice’s Biennial Festival. You’ve participated in this, and in Sao Paulo and Istanbul‘s. Were these your most difficult projects to date?
Michael: No. I think we are too ignorant to such kind of pressures. If we feel we have a good idea for a project we care less about the context. Sometimes we do our best shows in remote places where no one ever sees them (haha!). In 2009 we will be responsible for two neighbouring pavilions in Venice. The Danish and the Nordic one. It makes it more interesting since we can work in a transnational way - across national representation - and we will do one big staging of the two pavilions. We intend to exchange the national representation with a presentation of various identities and to turn the pavilions into some fictional private homes.
SS: 1997’s most evocative series Powerless Structures appears primarily as a critique on social structures and the founding principles of modernist architecture, such as form and function over aesthetics, which you successfully subvert. Was it your intention to 're-empower’ people against these factors, and in turn, do you believe the original modernist manifesto failed to empower society, instead merely oppressing and segregating it?
Michael: The whole idea of a public space which is for everybody has failed. Sad but true. Because no one ever felt comfortable in these rigid environments where all kind of personal and diverse cultural signs had been reduced to a minimum. Nobody wants to be a rat in a lab.
SS. Can concerns as these be tackled by work such as yours?
Michael: Art will never trigger any revolution but it can sometimes makes us reflect upon certain things - for a split second.
SS: Installation artists Robert Irwin and James Turrell wrote “The Object of art may be to seek an elimination of the necessity for it”. Was this the philosophy behind 'Prada Marfa', the lone-standing Texan-desert boutique?
Powerless Structures, 2001
Michael: It's a very Adornosk idea. Of course we don't want art to be instrumentalised but on the other hand I don't really see the point in making l'art pour l'art which is the other extreme. 'Prada Marfa' derived from our first Prada project which took place in Chelsea, New York. There we covered the front window of our gallery with a white paper sheet upon which there was printed: Opening Soon - Prada. Everybody believed that the gallery had run out of business and that Prada would move into the space. The work was about gentrification. Not really popular by our former gallerist there since she didn't have any visitors for the duration of our show. The idea of doing the forever closed Prada store in the dessert was basically to isolate this ‘emblemic’ architecture, to take it out of its usual context and through this displacement to be able to look at it in a refreshed and critical way. The dessert close to Marfa was a good location since you have the Judd foundation in that area, too. And we are interested in how Minimalism got turned into kitsch.
SS: The 'elimination of necessity’ seems to be a concurrent theme in your work, as End Station displays similar principles. But of all your projects, it seems that 'Prada Marfa' garners the most attention. Why do you think this is?
Michael: Prada is a powerful player - both in the art scene and on the fashion market. Koons joked about liberating the American upper middle class from their guilt of having such a bad taste - Prada educated them to have style - at least in their dress code.
SS: Is there any known record of anyone attempting to enter and purchase anything from the outlet??
Michael: No
SS: In terms of your art, are you satisfied with what you’ve achieved? Or is there plenty more rocket fuel left to burn?
Michael: Oh, we have just started. This is the first day of our lives.
Elmgreen and Dragset's 'Side Effects' is currently at the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris until 8 March 2008.
Words: Tiffany Tondut
All photos (c) Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset