Elmgreen & Dragset @ Pace Gallery, Los Angeles - "The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" Exhibition

Elmgreen & Dragset

The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

Pace Gallery, Los Angeles

September 13 – October 25, 2025

Pace presents The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, Elmgreen & Dragset’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles—and their fourth with the gallery. This immersive two-part presentation will occupy the main exhibition space and the adjacent south gallery, exploring themes of scale, perception, and psychological distortion through enactments of doubling and resizing. The show follows Elmgreen & Dragset’s recent solo presentations at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Seoul, and it coincides with the artists’ thirtieth anniversary of working as a duo and the twentieth anniversary of their famed "Prada Marfa" installation, which was unveiled in Texas in 2005.

Renowned for their subversive sculptural interventions, Berlin-based artists Elmgreen & Dragset often examine questions of identity and belonging in their collaborative practice, and they are particularly interested in radical recontextualizations of objects and new modes of representation in sculpture and large-scale installation.

In The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, the artists explore how scale influences our understanding of reality. For this presentation, the duo plays with the physical features of Pace’s Los Angeles gallery, using the architectural division of the gallery as a framework for doubling and resizing. Each artwork is presented in full scale in the main gallery, while exact half-size versions are shown in the adjoining space, which the artists have rescaled into a half-size replica of the main space. This spatial reduplication and resizing is inspired by the neurological condition called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, or Dysmetropsia, in which shifts in perception, often triggered by fatigue, alter one’s experiences of distance and scale.

The first work that visitors will encounter in the exhibition is a hyper realistic sculpture of a female gallery assistant slumped over the reception desk, seemingly asleep. The surreal presentation that follows in the exhibition spaces, where objects appear out of scale, could be a vision or dream playing out in her mind, in which visitors are the protagonists.

The main gallery space will feature new sculptural works and wall pieces—works from the duo’s Sky Target series—that probe the boundaries of the real and the reflected, the seen and the sensed. In their circular Sky Target paintings, fragments of clouds drifting across blue skies are rendered on mirror polished stainless steel disks. The skies are partially obscured by reflective surfaces, allowing viewers to glimpse themselves within illusory “heavens.” Each Sky Target is named after a specific location that the artists have visited. Two circular wall works, which the artists refer to as “stripe paintings,” will also be on view. In these works, vertical bands revealing airplanes and their contrails in the sky alternate with equally sized bands of mirrored strips, creating a rhythm of image and reflection. The tension between transparency and opacity, and representation and self-awareness, is heightened by the viewer’s shifting position within the space.

Two figurative sculptures carved in marble will be presented on the floor of both the main and adjacent galleries. One of these works depicts two young men, both wearing VR goggles, embracing—physically close but mentally elsewhere. The other shows a young man seated with headphones, absorbed in his own auditory reality. These figures embody the contemporary condition of disconnection, amplified by digital mediation. The immateriality of the digital experiences represented in both works is contrasted with their medium, marble, a historically significant and physically durable material that is deeply rooted in the tradition of sculpture.

The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome invites visitors into a mise en abyme of visual and spatial contradictions. While much of our reality has been compressed into the format of an iPhone screen, Elmgreen & Dragset continue their investigations into how physical environments shape our sense of self and how bodily presence still plays an important role in the way we interact with our surroundings.

ARTIST DUO ELMGREEN & DRAGSET

Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen, b. 1961, Copenhagen, Denmark; Ingar Dragset, b. 1969, Trondheim, Norway) pursue questions of identity and belonging and investigate social, cultural, and political structures in their artistic practice. They are interested in the discourse that can ensue when objects are radically re-contextualized and traditional modes for the representation of art are altered. Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are based in Berlin and have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. They have presented numerous solo exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide including Kunsthalle Zürich (2001); Tate Modern, London (2004); Serpentine Gallery, London (2006); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2009); ZKM - Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany (2010); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2011); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2013–14); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2015); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2016); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2016); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2018–19); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (2019–2020); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2022); and Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2023–24). In 2009, they represented both the Nordic and the Danish Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale. They are renowned for large-scale public installations including Short Cut (2003), an installation comprising a Fiat Uno and a camper trailer, which appear to emerge from the ground; Prada Marfa (2005), a full-scale replica of a Prada boutique installed along U.S. Route 90 in Valentine, Texas; and Van Gogh’s Ear (2016), a gigantic vertical swimming pool placed in front of Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Their work is held in public collections worldwide, including ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, Denmark; Art Production Fund, New York; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Hamburger Bahnhof, Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin; Kistefos Museet, Jevnaker, Norway; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others.

PACE LOS ANGELES

1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles

www.pacegallery.com

Elmgreen & Dragset @ Pace Gallery, NYC - The Nervous System

Elmgreen & Dragset 

The Nervous System

Pace Gallery, New York

November 10 – December 18, 2021

Elmgreen & Dragset

The Painter, Fig. 1, 2021 

© Elmgreen & Dragset, courtesy Pace Gallery

Elmgreen & Dragset 

Tailbone (Stainless Steel), 2021 

© Elmgreen & Dragset, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents an exhibition of new and recent work by the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset. This exhibition marks the Berlin–based artists’ first major show with Pace since they joined the gallery in 2020. The Nervous System, which comprises a highly narrative domestic scene of 11 works, including eight new pieces, is reminiscent of Elmgreen & Dragset’s acclaimed double exhibition, titled The Collectors, in the Nordic and Danish Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009.

Elmgreen & Dragset, who have been collaborating since 1995, will take over the first floor of Pace’s New York space for this presentation, creating an almost surreal depiction of a dysfunctional home within the gallery’s walls. Featuring varied sculptural elements that together create a complex set of associations, the exhibition encourages viewers to draw their own interpretations of the scene from the many different cues in the display. For instance, five characters are presented as figurative sculptures, though the relationships between these characters are not explicitly described. In this presentation, Elmgreen & Dragset have inverted the experience of reading a novel, providing images but requiring viewers to construct the story.

Among the recent works in the exhibition is the installation Short Story (2020), which features two figurative bronze sculptures of young boys on a tennis court and speaks to competition in society at large as well as the subjective nature of fairness. New pieces in the show include Boy with Gun, a sculptural installation showing a painted white bronze figure of a young boy holding a gun above his head and staring through a window, and The Painter, Fig. 1, a sculptural rendering of the act of painting that blends the two mediums and playfully intertwines reality and representation. 

Elmgreen & Dragset’s extraordinary, large-scale sculptural installations have been presented around the world. Among their permanent public works are Prada Marfa, a reproduction of a Prada store erected in Marfa, Texas in 2005, Bent Pool in Miami, the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime in Berlin, and their site-specific ceiling installation, The Hive, which was unveiled at the new Moynihan Train Hall in New York in December 2020. Central to the artists’ practice are investigations of the social histories of public spaces, and their works are often imbued with political and emotional resonance.

As Ann Lui wrote in a 2018 essay published on the occasion of the artists’ solo exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, London, “In Elmgreen & Dragset’s work questions of queer space always intersect exploration of issues of economy and governance and their tongue-in-cheek critiques of late-capitalist life.”

Much of the artists’ work, like the stainless-steel Han sculpture in the Danish city of Elsinore, incorporates figurative elements. Others, like the large-scale sculpture Van Gogh’s Ear presented in New York, Hong Kong, and Wuhan, utilize recognizable objects from the physical world to conjure unexpected associations.

“What’s important is that art can make us less fearful,” Elmgreen said in a 2019 interview with the critic Linda Yablonsky.

In June 2021, Elmgreen & Dragset inaugurated a permanent outdoor sculpture, Life Rings, at the Royal Djurgården in Stockholm, Sweden. The artists’ solo exhibition at Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark will be on view until October 24. On October 4, coinciding with a presentation of selected sculptures throughout the Würth Kunstmuseum, Künzelsau, the artists will be awarded the Robert Jacobsen Prize, one of Europe’s biggest prizes for artists. In spring 2022, they will present a multi-venue solo exhibition inside and outside the Fondazione Prada in Milan.

In conjunction with this presentation, Pace produces a catalogue featuring an essay by the writer Martin Herbert and an interview with the artists by the art historian Richard Shiff.

PACE GALLERY

540 West 25th Street, New York

www.pacegallery.com

Elmgreen & Dragset @ Pace Gallery, East Hampton, New York

Elmgreen & Dragset 

Pace Gallery, East Hampton 

Through November 15, 2020 

Elmgreen & Dragset

Doubt, 2019 

© Elmgreen & Dragset, courtesy of Pace Gallery

Pace Gallery presents Berlin-based artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset’s first exhibition with the gallery since joining Pace in June 2020. On view at Pace’s location in East Hampton, the presentation features five recent and new works as well as an offsite outdoor sculptural installation. Viewers are invited to create their own narratives, responding to implied actions and emotions suggested in the selection of works, where traces of presence and absence are finely balanced and where gestures both bold and intimate are interwoven.

Among the most renowned and widely exhibited artists in Europe, Michael Elmgreen (b. 1961, Copenhagen) and Ingar Dragset (b. 1969, Trondheim, Norway) challenge and readdress how art is presented and experienced with an often playful and subversive approach. The artist duo pursues complex questions of identity, sexuality, and belonging in their work. Often radically re-contextualizing everyday objects or transforming exhibition spaces into unexpected new environments, Elmgreen & Dragset draw on both lived experience and the context in which their works are shown. 2020 marks the 25th year of their collaboration, which has continued to call into question established power structures in society and deal with fundamental, existential questions.

On view in the exhibition is Couple, Fig. 19 (2019), part of an ongoing series of paired diving boards, which exemplifies this play with perception—shifting the role of the object by removing it from its functional setting and calling into question the significance of environment. The materiality of the work also defies the immediate reading of it as readymades, as each element is crafted by hand. Since their first diving board sculpture in 1997, the motif of a swimming pool has frequently appeared in their work. One key example was their 2016 installation Van Gogh’s Ear at the Fifth Avenue entrance of the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center in New York, which featured a large ear-shaped pool structure with an iconic, cyan-blue interior, lights, a diving board, and a stainless-steel ladder. Similarly, the duo’s Bent Pool (2019)—the 20-foot-tall installation in Pride Park outside the Miami Beach Convention Center—takes the form of an oval pool, bent upright into an inverted U-shape.

Elmgreen & Dragset

Black Socks, 2019 

© Elmgreen & Dragset, courtesy of Pace Gallery

Elmgreen & Dragset’s Black Socks (2019) subverts traditional notions of objectification and desire. The visual appearance of this sculpture responds to Peter Hujar’s black and white photograph Christopher Street Pier #2 (Crossed Legs) (1976) in both form and color. The position of the crossed legs of the sculpture is drawn directly from the subject in Hujar’s iconic work, and the colors of the sculpture mimic the black-and-white tonality of the photographer’s image. Just as queer experiences play a profound role in the work of Elmgreen & Dragset, Hujar’s work frequently and powerfully captured queer life in New York City.

As part of the presentation Pace also shows Short Story (2020), a new outdoor installation situated on a tennis court incorporating two figurative bronze sculptures of young boys following the conclusion of a tennis match—one victorious, the other defeated. The expressions of the figures invite viewers to call into question the idea of competition and its reverberations in society, and more broadly the nuanced notion of situational fairness and outcomes. This installation is available for viewing by appointment only. Tied to the exhibition, Pace also debuts a conversation between Elmgreen & Dragset and friend, collaborator, and fellow Pace artist Fred Wilson as an introduction to the gallery’s global audience. 

Pace’s presentation coincides with Elmgreen & Dragset’s new solo exhibition, 2020, at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland. On view through January 17, 2021, the exhibition features a selection of site-specific, new, and familiar sculptures by the artists, presented together in a format that transforms Finland’s largest museum into a surreal car park, incorporating real cars, road markings, and a selection of Elmgreen & Dragset sculptures—several of which are seen for the first time. The melancholic, half abandoned parking lot that makes up the exhibition seems to beg the question: What will happen to intimacy after 2020, a year of social distancing and heightened fear of sharing physical space?

Other recent solo exhibitions include Elmgreen & Dragset: Sculptures at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, which was presented from September 2019 – January 2020 and marked the artists’ first major museum presentation in the U.S. Installed throughout the interior and exterior spaces of the Nasher, the works on view exemplified the artists’ use of multiple aesthetics and working methods, and drew upon Minimalism, conceptual strategies, and the figurative sculpture tradition.

Elmgreen & Dragset have been described as subtly infiltrating art institutions from the inside with their critical gaze, frequently using museum and gallery architecture as both subject and material, laying bare the social and cultural systems that expose the fiction of neutrality trafficked by the white cube. “…But instead of using the traditional methods of institutional critique we rather change the identity and the actual physical appearance of the white cube” says Dragset. Elmgreen & Dragset have used such a strategy on numerous occasions. At UCCA in Beijing they turned the vast exhibition hall into a whole art fair mimicking a conventional fair layout with gallery booths in a fishbone grid, a café, a bookstore and an information desk, but only displaying works by themselves which were not for sale. In Seoul, Elmgreen & Dragset turned Samsung Museum of Art’s venue Plateau into a dysfunctional airport, and outside Marfa, Texas, they erected perhaps their most well-known project: Prada Marfa, a forever closed luxury boutique in the middle of the Texan desert.

Elmgreen & Dragset have produced several public sculptures, often addressing tensions between public and private, intimacy and alienation, power and powerlessness. Such projects include The Mayor of London’s Commission for the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2012, a temporary installation for which they created a bronze figure of a boy on a toy rocking horse. The infantilized figure offered a humorous counterpoint to the militarized masculinity of equestrian statuary, epitomized by the sculpture of King George IV that famously sits on the plinth opposite. Their Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime was commissioned by the German federal Government in 2008 and is permanently located in Berlin’s Tiergarten next to the Holocaust Memorial.

In 2017, Elmgreen & Dragset curated the Istanbul Biennial. In 2015, they received an honorary doctorate from NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. For the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, the artists curated and staged The Collectors, an exhibition in the Danish and Nordic Pavilions that transformed the pavilions into a domestic living space inhabited by an art collector and featured works by 24 artists. In 2002 the duo won the German art prize Preis der Nationalgalerie and in 2000 they were shortlisted for Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize.

Elmgreen & Dragset’s most recent monographic publications include: Elmgreen & Dragset published by Phaidon, 2019; Sculptures published by Hatje Cantz and Nasher Sculpture Center, 2019; and This Is How We Bite our Tongue published by The Whitechapel Gallery, 2018.

Visitors are required to schedule their visit in advance. To schedule your visit, go to Pace's website.

PACE GALLERY

68 Park Place, East Hampton, New York

pacegallery.com