Michael Elmgreen Ingar Dragset

Portrait of the artists.

Works

Powerless Structures have, over the past few years, made Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset internationally acclaimed artists. Their works meet the categories of art, architecture and design. In installations and performances, this duo explores and redefines space and its numerous possibilities of definition and function…

…But new museums are good, right? “The problem with them is that they are not flexible,” says Elmgreen. He says they are built for the monumentalism of modern art—big paintings and stand-alone sculptures—not the free-wheeling installations and multi-screen videos of contemporary art.

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have since 1997 been creating a series called ‘Powerless Structures’ that investigates the way in which sites such as prisons, social security offices, hospitals, museums, galleries and parks act as means of social control…