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9/11/2001

Taking Place

Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich

Michael Elmgreen (Denmark, 1961) and Ingar Dragset (Norway, 1969) have been a team since 1995. In their work, which includes performances, objects, and installations, they examine the socio-cultural structures manifested in art and society. Since 1997, they have been working on a consecutively numbered series of Powerless Structures which makes use of two neutralities: the supposed neutrality of a minimalist formal vocabulary in architecture and art, and that of the color white. The institutionalized container for art, the White Cube, neutral and yet exceedingly charged with ideological implications, takes center stage in their investigations because they are "artists" and because the cube represents the space of social presence officially allotted to them. Their spatial structures and objects guilefully expose the blind spots in assumptions of the Cube's formal autonomy and neutrality by introducing sexual and paradoxical elements or juxtaposing inside and outside or private and public, not as ideological opposites but rather as issues under debate. They do not focus on the "building" as such, but rather on the process of building as a process of generating meaning and a forum for discussing the premises which apply to both artists and users.

Process again prevails in Taking Place, the project created by the two artists for the Kunsthalle Zürich. They have transformed the Kunsthalle into a building site, where the ongoing construction of a "permanent Installation" of their work represents a future display situation at the Kunsthalle. Taking Place reveals the space of art as a temporary work in progress, geared towards the specific creation of rooms for the presentation of art. For the duration of the exhibition, doors are opened to a "behind-the-scenes" scenario. We see offices being moved, walls being torn down and built, the details of construction, the suspended state of administrative reorganization in the non-public spaces of art, and the public spaces of art presentation prior to their renewed accessibility as such.

The project includes an ongoing discourse on the use of the Kunsthalle, the ever growing diversity of needs which spaces of art are expected to satisfy, the way in which the use of rooms may influence or even constitute their form, and what the representation of objects in rooms actually means. As artists, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset put their solo exhibition, the duration of their presence in the museum, at the disposal of their host. By so doing, they also address the significance of working individuals and bodies, of professional responsibilities and capabilities, and an open process for the formulation of art.

Kunsthalle Zurich
Limmatstrasse 270 8005 Zurigo t 01 2721515 f 01 2721888

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Tuesday - Friday 12 to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday 11 - 5 p.m. Closed Mondays

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