The V&A has commissioned to the contemporary artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset to create a major site-specific installation in the former Textile Galleries. Elmgreen & Dragset’s V&A installation, Tomorrow, extends many of the themes that the artist duo have explored over the course of their career: the creation of personas; the precipice between public and private; and a distinctive dark humour.

The London and Berlin-based artists Elmgreen & Dragset have transformed, with ""Tomorrow", several of the museum’s rooms, into the apartment of a fictional, elderly and disillusioned architect.

Tomorrow is an immersive and intriguing installation which invites you to snoop around the home of fictional architect Norman Swann, piecing together his life and personality from choreographed details scattered throughout a grand but decaying apartment. A script - available for free within the exhibition - adds narrative flesh to the bones of rooms and objects, which together form a set for an as-yet-unrealised film. Surely more than one will remember the first exhibition of "The Manhattan Transcripts", "The Park" by Bernard Tschumi in 1978.

The domestic setting will appear like a set for an unrealised play. A script, written by the artists, will be available for visitors as a printed book. Visitors will be able to explore the apartment, sit on the sofa and read the inhabitant’s books and magazines.

 The exhibition recontextualized the idea of ​​museum, exhibition, just as it were doing exhibitions for The Manhattan Transcripts in the galleries they were exposed.

Throughout their career the artists have redefined the way in which art is presented and experienced, raising issues around social models and spaces, and prompting a re-thinking of the status quo.

This ambitious exhibition will feature objects from the V&A's collections alongside works by the artists and items sourced from antique markets to create an unexpected encounter for the museum visitor.

Venue.-  Victoria and Albert Museum. London. U.K.
Dates.- 1 October 2013 - 2 January 2014

Read more
Read less

More information

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, based in Berlin and London, have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. They have held numerous solo exhibitions in art institutions worldwide, including Serpentine Gallery and Tate Modern in London, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, ZKM Museum of Modern Art in Karlsruhe, The Power Plant in Toronto, MUSAC in Léon, and Kunsthalle Zürich. Their work has been included in the Berlin, Sao Paulo, Gwangju, Moscow, Singapore, Istanbul and Liverpool biennials, and in 2009 they received a special mention for their exhibition The Collectors in the Nordic and Danish Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Amongst their most well known works are Prada Marfa – a full scale replica of a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texan desert, and Short Cut – a car and a caravan breaking through the ground which was first shown in Milan and now resides in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Recent projects include their “Powerless Structures, Fig 101” showing a boy astride a rocking horse on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, and the Scandinavian debut of their Performa-commissioned play Happy Days in the Art World at the Bergen International Festival and the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen in Summer 2012.

Read more
Published on: December 17, 2013
Cite: ""A disillusioned architect". Tomorrow - Elmgreen and Dragset at the V&A." METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/disillusioned-architect-tomorrow-elmgreen-and-dragset-va> ISSN 1139-6415
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...

Our selection