Elmgreen & Dragset
Elmgreen & Dragset, Spring 2009, pp 89-90
A neon-pink sign that reads “The Mirror” twitches promisingly above the exterior door to the gallery on a rainy, grey London day. “ADMISSION OVER 18 ONLY” warns a steely plaque on the door. The gallery entrance looks foreign; once inside, I realize that the shelter from the rain only generates a deeper depression. It is dark inside, empty and hollow-feeling. Somebody has had a party in the gallery without inviting the viewer, and not only is every visitor late, but everyone else has long since left. The exhibition, “Too Late,” is in the typical Elmgreen & Dragset vein of immersive environments and installations. In projects sometimes successful (the Prada boutique in Marfa, Texas) and sometimes not (“The Welfare Show” at The Power Plant), the duo have shown a knack for ambitious visual trickery. Here, they transform both floors of Victoria Miro into a gay club, extending the realism by hosting it as such for one night. Cigarette butts, empty beer bottles and deflated balloons litter the floor, a disco ball has crash-landed and a morose voice crooning “All those parties I was never invited to...” wafts over the sound system.
Painted entirely in black and dimly lit by blinking coloured lights, the space exudes melancholy, punctuated with homoerotic images on mirrored Perspex. I venture a bit further and discover a public restroom, complete with urinal cake, errant bits of toilet paper and “Fashion fags go home!” graffitied on the stalls, under one of which two pairs of sneaker-shod feet suggestively face each other. It is all terribly convincing, but I cannot help but think how it is also all too arranged. From the impenetrable VIP room on the second floor to the messenger bag containing someone’s jeans left in the lounge area, the details are too perfect, I fear. But that is exactly it. Elmgreen & Dragset have succeeded in recreating the modern age’s hyperreal malaise of social connections and networking—and their inherent emptiness.
A glance at the list of works in the show shatters the illusion once and for all. After all, this is an exhibition made for a commercial gallery. Yet the way the works have been grouped for sale is slightly forced. Fancy a faux cloakroom, anyone? How about (Un)Lucky Strike, a work that contains a sofa, a disco ball and two glass tables? These pieces work well together, yet to separate them would make them meaningless.
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