Elmgreen & Dragset
Highway Painting, No. 4
Artist
Elmgreen & Dragset
(1995, Kopenhagen ), Danish, Norwegian
Original Title
Highway Painting, No. 4
Date2018
Mediumtechnical colour, asphalt and aluminium frame
Dimensions205 × 105,2 × 9 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionElmgreen and Dragset have been working as an artistic duo since 1995 at the intersection of art and architecture, performace and installation. The artists’s early works were performances, but most of their following creations were sculptural and constantly extended into surrounding space all the way to creating environments. The artists are interested in the environment of objects, and the discourse which arises by recontextualising them. They play with different modes of displaying art and by that their work criticises the role of established art institutions. In their works they relate to questions of globalisation, commodification, social culture and the restrictions which work in tandem with them.
Elmgreen & Dragset’s Highway Paintings give the impression of white street markings on asphalt. But instead of regulating the road traffic these stripes indicate absurd and ridiculous directions. The circle in Highway Painting, No. 4 rather shows a geometrical form which keeps to aesthetic rules. By changing the daily visual features of public infrastructure, the spectator becomes aware of the public communication of order. The duo Elmgreen & Dragset thus relate to the aesthetics and iconography of Minimalism which they however strip of its Formalist style and give it new and fresh possibilities of existence. For the language of art, the urban visuals in the form of asphalt and technical colours are innovative, and bring a novel overlap of the artistic and non-artistic sphere.
Michael Elmgreen (*1961, Copenhagen, Denmark) and Ingar Dragset (*Trondheim, Norway) started with performance art in Copenhagen in 1995. In 1997, they set up a workshop in Berlin. Since 1999 their work has been internationally represented. In 2005 they achieved their artistic breakthrough with a Prada boutique built in the Texas desert. As early as 2003, Elmgreen and Dragset had won the Federal Government’s competition for a monument to homosexuals persecuted under National Socialism, which has been in the Tiergarten since May 2008. In 2009 the artist duo redesigned the Danish and Norwegian pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale as the homes of wealthy art collectors with their acclaimed exhibition. The duo has taken part in major art events and exhibited their art at international institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2007 and 2005), the Serpentine Gallery in London (2006), Tate Modern in London (2004), Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt (2003), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002 and 2001) and Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1998) or the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2013). In 2017 they curated the 15th Istanbul Biennale. They have been awarded numerous honorary prizes (Preis der Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Arken Art Prize; Kritikerlaget/Norwegian Critics’ Association Kunstkritikerprisen; B.Z. Culture Prize, Berlín).
Elmgreen & Dragset’s Highway Paintings give the impression of white street markings on asphalt. But instead of regulating the road traffic these stripes indicate absurd and ridiculous directions. The circle in Highway Painting, No. 4 rather shows a geometrical form which keeps to aesthetic rules. By changing the daily visual features of public infrastructure, the spectator becomes aware of the public communication of order. The duo Elmgreen & Dragset thus relate to the aesthetics and iconography of Minimalism which they however strip of its Formalist style and give it new and fresh possibilities of existence. For the language of art, the urban visuals in the form of asphalt and technical colours are innovative, and bring a novel overlap of the artistic and non-artistic sphere.
Michael Elmgreen (*1961, Copenhagen, Denmark) and Ingar Dragset (*Trondheim, Norway) started with performance art in Copenhagen in 1995. In 1997, they set up a workshop in Berlin. Since 1999 their work has been internationally represented. In 2005 they achieved their artistic breakthrough with a Prada boutique built in the Texas desert. As early as 2003, Elmgreen and Dragset had won the Federal Government’s competition for a monument to homosexuals persecuted under National Socialism, which has been in the Tiergarten since May 2008. In 2009 the artist duo redesigned the Danish and Norwegian pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale as the homes of wealthy art collectors with their acclaimed exhibition. The duo has taken part in major art events and exhibited their art at international institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2007 and 2005), the Serpentine Gallery in London (2006), Tate Modern in London (2004), Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt (2003), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002 and 2001) and Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1998) or the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2013). In 2017 they curated the 15th Istanbul Biennale. They have been awarded numerous honorary prizes (Preis der Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Arken Art Prize; Kritikerlaget/Norwegian Critics’ Association Kunstkritikerprisen; B.Z. Culture Prize, Berlín).
