Michael Elmgreen Bücher

"Some people find a certain cruelty in parts of our work," say the rising conceptualist-collaborators Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, "but they are definitely not more vicious than any real life experiences." Since 1995, Elmgreen and Dragset have tackled issues of privatization, gentrification, social alienation and the dismantling of social welfare. For their first show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in 2001 they papered over the windows with the announcement "Opening Soon Prada." Pursuing and inverting this theme, in 2005 they installed a mocked-up Prada store on a deserted road near Marfa, Texas. They have recreated hospitals and prison cells, and have reconfigured gallery spaces to spatially deter their would-be audience. "Our aim is to investigate some of the power structures that these spaces derive from, and by exchanging and replacing some of these structures, show how fragile they actually are." This monograph is the first extensive survey of their work to date.

Throughout their careers, the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen, b. Copenhagen, Denmark, 1961, and Ingar Dragset, b. Trondheim, Norway, 1969, live and work in Berlin) have eschewed the traditional " White Cube" exhibition format by creating large-scale installations and staging narrative situations in which autobiographical quotes blend with fictional stories and cultural references. For the solo exhibition READ, Elmgreen & Dragset have transformed Kunsthalle Praha into a minimalist version of a modern public library to prompt reflections on our relationship with physical books and knowledge in the age of digital media. With new works by Elmgreen & Dragset as well as performances, videos, collages, paintings, and sculptures by other artists, READ also probes the relation between books and the making of art. This richly illustrated publication documents the dynamic interaction between language, books, and art. With contributions from renowned scholars and a curatorial text by Elmgreen & Dragset.

This volume documents the long-term initiative 'Safety Curtain' of Museum in progress, a project that is unique in the world. The exhibition series in the Vienna State Opera has represented a symbolic interface between performance and visual arts since 1998. It also creates a link between thorny historical questions and contemporary ways to address them. Beyond the actual curtain images that have originated over the years an associative and sensuous view to further related works of the participating artists in several different media forms is presented. The art project 'Safety Curtain', because of its exceptional quality, its year-long existence and its unusual dimension of 175 m² is singular and enables a distinctive perspective of art history of the past twenty years.