Artist Duo Elmgreen & Dragset Turns a Gallery Into an Abandoned Boiler Room

Description

Berlin-based artists Michael Elmgreen (b. 1961, Denmark) and Ingar Dragset (b. 1969, Norway) have worked together since 1995. The duo have had solo exhibitions in prominent institutions worldwide.

For their Hong Kong solo exhibition, entitled Overheated, Elmgreen & Dragset will transform Massimo De Carlo’s third-floor gallery into an abandoned, underground boiler room. The show will see industrial tubes of various sizes and colours crisscrossing throughout the space, re-directing the visitors’ movements into new patterns as they will have to step over, bend under, or walk around the large tubes in order to navigate the site.

The metal tubes appear as if they were penetrating the floor, walls, and support columns, creating the illusion of some sort of functionality. Like other works by Elmgreen & Dragset, it puts on display what is usually meant to go unnoticed. Within this installation, a number of  seemingly ready-made sculptural works by Elmgreen & Dragset that imply traces of human activities can be found, such as a leftover black car seat cast in bronze.

Overheated engages with the shifting cultural dynamics of Hong Kong’s recent history. A city once recognised as a major manufacturing center for goods and products, is today more well-known as a financial center and an art market hub. Just as production that previously took place in Hong Kong has shifted elsewhere, the physicality of manufacturing has become increasingly estranged from many people’s everyday realities.