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

Infant: Banned Skills @ Whitney Online Gallery space for Internet and new media art - artport

INFANT: BANNED SKILLS

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

2025 - artport - Online Gallery

INFANT

Still from BANNED SKILLS, 2025

© INFANT

The Whitney Museum of American Art launched BANNED SKILLS, a digital art project by artist duo INFANT, sidony o’neal and Bogosi Sekhukhuni, on artport, the Whitney’s online gallery space for Internet and new media art. Commissioned for artport, the work serves as the portal to engage with INFANT’s evolving conceptual framework, XENOFORMALISM. The artists designed BANNED SKILLS as an interactive entry point to explore new speculative understandings of formal systems like math, science, and design. The project reveals how seemingly contrasting ideas can align to generate new aesthetic or ideological orders.

BANNED SKILLS is a nonlinear aesthetic narrative that prompts viewers to consider various aspects of humanity and established understandings of objects or histories. Unfolding along two distinct paths, the work’s primary navigation tool utilizes the psychological phenomenon of the bouba-kiki effect. The phenomenon, first presented in the 1920s, reflects deliberate associations between speech sounds and visual shapes with the word bouba often associated with smooth, rounded shapes and kiki with sharp, angular ones. Within BANNED SKILLS, users begin their experience in a “NEST” where the kiki and bouba forms exist, selecting one of the two shapes to take them along different paths. Along these journeys, users interact with a range of artifacts from art, architecture, design, and sound to explore cultural representations through unexpected groupings, placing the objects in conversation with one another. Encounters with juxtapositions of cultural artifacts—from the Gameboy Advanced SP Tribal Edition to the necklace made from precisely designed whale bones—invite users to gain new perspectives and draw connections. In the top-left corner of the screen, an interactive virtual music device lets users toggle between the kiki- and bouba-coded soundscapes, further emphasizing the visual juxtapositions. After users explore both spaces, a final third environment will appear.

“BANNED SKILLS hopes to use participation as a way around the problem of ‘talking at’ the viewer, working with, not against, postures of engagement from the early 2000's gaming boom that feel familiar and nostalgic simultaneously,” said David Lisbon, Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney. “This is the first artport project that dives into this cross-section of the post digital and is a form of practice that garners attention because of its utility across levels of understanding. Considering the intersections of art and design have become a prominent narrative for emerging forms of contemporary engagement.”

The artists designed the virtual experience of BANNED SKILLS as a starting point for exploring their concept of XENOFORMALISM (XF). The prefix “XENO,” meaning strange or foreign in Greek, suggests an unfamiliar type of formalism. XF can be imagined as a category of filters to guide users in unpacking and connecting histories of visual aesthetics, sonic landscapes, and science. The work offers an aesthetic approach to new understandings of cultural representations, using histories of science fiction and digital culture—including gaming and computer graphics—as speculative introductions. The branching sequences INFANT has formed in BANNED SKILLS encourages viewers to reexamine how meaning is formed and reinforced within art, art history, design, science, and science fiction, and how these fields shape and contribute to collective cultural memory.

INFANT’s BANNED SKILLS was organized by David Lisbon, Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum, and commissioned for artport, the Museum’s online gallery space for Internet and new media art commissions. artport is organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney. 

ARTIST DUO INFANT

Sidony O’Neal (b. 1988) is a conceptual artist whose work and interdisciplinary research is informed by mathematics, architectural systems, and the histories of objects, from 15th Century locking mechanisms to plastic industrial pallets. Their works explore human relationships to objects, labor, and technology.

Their work has been featured in exhibitions at Et al., San Francisco, CA; Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; Dracula’s Revenge, New York, NY; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; Veronica, Seattle, WA; Third Born, Mexico City, Mexico; ICA at Maine College of Art and Design, Portland, ME; and Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY. O’Neal has had residencies at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; and Banff Centre, Banff, AB, among others. Their performances have been featured at Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Volksbühne Berlin, and Performance Space New York. O'Neal is the recipient of awards and fellowships including the Oregon Arts Commission's Joan Shipley Award and a Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. In 2023, they were awarded a Hallie Ford Fellowship. O'Neal is co-founder of design firm INFANT.

Bogosi Sekhukhuni (b. 1991) is an artist and designer who reflects on cultures and histories of technology. Working across a range of media such as sculpture, video, set design, furniture design and performance, Sekhukhuni suggests ways to think about the mechanics of futurity.

Since 2012, Sekhukhuni’s work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions, including Role Play, Fondazione Prada, Milan; Age of You, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; Art in the Age of Anxiety, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics, New Museum, New York; Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Foxy Production, New York; Rencontres de Bamako, African Biennale of Photography, Mali; and Simunye Summit 2010, Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg. They have been awarded the Prix Net Art Award, Rhizome, New York (2017). Sekhukhuni is a founding member of the artist group NTU and has worked closely with CUSS Group. Sekhukhuni is co-founder of the design firm INFANT.

ABOUT ARTPORT

artport is the Whitney Museum’s portal to Internet art and an online gallery space for net art and new media art commissions. Launched in 2001, artport provides access to original commissioned artworks, documentation of net art and new media art exhibitions at the Whitney, and new media art in the Museum’s collection. Recent commissions include Ashley Zelinkskie’s Twin Quasar (2024); Maya Man’s A Realistic Day In My Life In New York City (2024); Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s xhairymutantx (2024); Nancy Baker Cahill’s CENTO (2024); Peter Burr’s Sunshine Monument (2023); Rick Silva’s Liquid Crystal (2023); Auriea Harvey’s SITE1 (2023); Amelia Winger-Bearskin’s Sky/World Death/World (2022); Mimi Ọnụọha’s 40% of Food in the US is Wasted (How the Hell is That Progress, Man?) (2022); and Rachel Rossin’s THE MAW OF (2022). Access these and more projects at whitney.org/artport.

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City