The result is a sexually charged stage set masquerading as a minimalist installation. For their installation in Gallery 400, Elmgreen and Dragset cut perfect holes in stretched white canvases and suspended them from the ceiling. Holes are cut into walls to provide places for eyes and dicks, and men are encouraged to watch, suck, or get sucked off.
In the back rooms of gay bars, anonymous sex acts and acts of voyeurism are facilitated through modified architecture. They are particularly interested in inflecting these spaces with signifiers of gay sexuality, with often surreal, incongruous results.
For this exhibition, Gallery 400 presents artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, along with Gitte Villesen.Įlmgreen and Dragset’s work investigates how meaning is constructed in private and institutional architectural spaces. Bicycle Thieves is a summer-long project, held at eleven exhibition spaces in Chicago and Milwaukee, featuring the work of 21 Scandinavian artists coming out of the dynamic exhibition scene in and around Copenhagen, Denmark.
