For this episode of The Art Newspaper’s A brush with... podcast series, Elmgreen & Dragset join host Ben Luke to discuss their influences and the cultural experiences that have shaped their lives and work.

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Elmgreen & Dragset are included in a comprehensive exhibition on the theme of illusion in art, from the Old Masters to today. Since antiquity, artists have made use of the ‘trompe-l’oeil’ technique. This exhibition will consider how illusion goes beyond optical deception to include spatial illusion in architecture, the interplay of concealment and revelation, and the depiction of visions and dreams. Based on some 150 works of art spanning painting, drawing, print, photography, sculpture, installation and video art, the show traces the various forms taken by hyperrealism, reality, fiction, dream, transformation and deception. Among the presentation are major works from the Hamburger Kunsthalle as well as loans from national and international collections.

Hamburger Kunsthalle

Work by Elmgreen & Dragset is on view in a group exhibition at Museum Tinguely, Basel, which explores the close links between art history and shop window displays. Alongside Jean Tinguely, many artists have designed pioneering window displays. Concurrently, window displays have featured as a motif in many artworks or served as a stage for performances. Fresh Window explores this dynamic relationship from its beginnings to the present day.

Museum Tinguely

Known for combining performance, space and sculpture in their exhibitions, Elmgreen & Dragset have created a radical architectural intervention for Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Developed specifically for the museum and presenting a series of new figurative sculptures which thematise contemporary masculinities, the exhibition will establish a close dialogue with the museum’s permanent collection. As a result, visitors are welcomed to consider the similarities and differences in artistic approaches to figuration.

Musée d’Orsay

The Amorepacific Museum of Art is thrilled to present Elmgreen & Dragset: Spaces. The internationally known Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset have continually redefined exhibition making and the ways in which art can be experienced. Presenting over sixty works within five immersive installations – a full-scale family house, a public pool, a restaurant with an adjacent kitchen, and an artist's studio – this exhibition marks their most extensive presentation in Asia to date.

Within Spaces viewers will experience new installations of unprecedented scale and form. In Exhibition Room 1, visitors can enter a 140 square meter single-family house designed by Elmgreen & Dragset, explore its various rooms dotted with sculptural works and furniture pieces, and uncover clues about the lives of its fictional inhabitants. In Exhibition Room 2, the duo will install a to-scale public pool emptied of water. This melancholic image – a recurring motif in their oeuvre – suggests the decline of civic gathering spaces and the subsequent loss of community. Finally, visitors will encounter a restaurant named The Cloud. Seemingly caught between its opening hours, the space will be empty except for a lifelike figure of a young woman in the middle of a FaceTime conversation. Other installations will include an industrial kitchen that is reminiscent of a laboratory and an artist’s studio.

Through this expansive survey of Elmgreen & Dragset’s spatial practice, the Amorepacific Museum of Art seeks to provide its visitors with the unique opportunity to uncover unexpected interpretations of everyday realities. Featuring a combination of existing and new works by Elmgreen & Dragset, these architectural interventions will encourage visitors to hunt for narrative threads embedded within the exhibition and become protagonists of the story along the way.

Amorepacific Museum of Art

Elmgreen & Dragset’s installation Protruding Gallery, Powerless Structures, Fig. 223, 2024, is included in a new presentation of works from the Hamburger Bahnhof’s collection, to commemorate the reopening of the museum’s Rieckhallen. Featuring ten large-scale installations, sculptures and photo series from the last 25 years, the presentation includes new acquisitions which are presented to the public for the first time.

Hamburger Bahnhof