Elmgreen & Dragset
b. 1995
Michael Elmgreen b. 1961, Copenhagen, Denmark
Ingar Dragset b. 1969, Trondheim, Norway
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are based in Berlin and have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. They have held numerous solo exhibitions at art institutions worldwide, including EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland (2020); The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2019-20); The Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018–19); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2016); UCCA, Beijing (2016); PLATEAU, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2015); Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2014); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2013–14); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2011); ZKM Museum of Modern Art, Karlsruhe (2010); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (2009); Serpentine Gallery, London (2006); Tate Modern, London (2004); and Kunsthalle Zürich (2001).
Their work has been included in the Bangkok biennial (2018), Istanbul biennial (2013, 2011, 2001), Liverpool biennial (2012), Singapore biennial (2011), Moscow biennial (2011, 2007), Venice biennial (2009, 2003), Gwangju biennial (2006, 2002), São Paulo biennial (2002), and Berlin biennial (1998). In 2009 they received a special mention for their exhibition “The Collectors” in the Nordic and Danish Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Elmgreen & Dragset curated the 15th Istanbul Biennial in 2017.
Amongst their most well known works are “Prada Marfa” (2005)—a full scale replica of a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texan desert—and “Short Cut” (2003)—a car and a caravan breaking through the ground, first exhibited in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, Milan, and now in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The artist duo have realized several public sculptures including “Van Gogh’s Ear”, presented first by Public Art Fund at the Rockefeller Center in 2016 and now installed at K11 in Hong Kong, and “Bent Pool”, 2019, permanently installed in Pride Park, Miami Beach. In December 2020, the “The Hive” was installed permanently at Moynihan Train Hall, where it now welcomes visitors entering this renovated extension to Penn Station in New York. In Berlin, the artists won the German Government's competition for a “Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime”, which has been permanently installed in Tiergarten park since 2008 and their outdoor sculpture “Statue of Liberty” (2018) is permanently installed at the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart.
The artists were shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2000) and won the Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2002). In 2012 Elmgreen & Dragset were selected for London’s Fourth Plinth Commission in Trafalgar Square. In 2015 the artists received honorary doctorates at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and in 2020 they were awarded the B.Z.-Kulturpreis in Berlin.