Elmgreen & Dragset: Handle with Care

With their project Handle with Care, Elmgreen & Dragset are inaugurating “Schaufenster,” the Sammlung Goetz’s new exhibition space in Munich. In combination with works by Rosemarie Trockel, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince and Tom Sachs, a multidimensional parcours is created, prompting questions concerning vulnerability, identity and tensions between private and public space.

The Sammlung Goetz will occupy a new temporary exhibition space on Pacellistraße in the heart of Munich: a space with floor-to-ceiling windows in Sep Ruf’s Neue Maxburg shopping arcade. The new location will serve as a showcase, allowing the Sammlung Goetz to remain visible and present during the closure of its main location in Oberföhring. 

The Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset kicks things off with the exhibition Handle with Care. The ambiguous title refers to the familiar warning labels often found on boxes and crates used to transport artworks as well as to the care taken in human interactions. Many of Elmgreen & Dragset’s works explore such tensions. In their large-scale installations, the duo often employs life-size, naturalistic figures of people in everyday clothing, which they then stage in unsettling situations. The Berlin-based artist duo, consisting of Michael Elmgreen (born 1961, Copenhagen) and Ingar Dragset (born 1969, Trondheim), has been collaborating since 1995. They have had solo exhibitions worldwide at renowned institutions, including the Tate Modern and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen and the Fondazione Prada in Milan.

Elmgreen & Dragset are known not only for their subversive, socially critical work and their subtle humor, but also for their curatorial concepts, in which they engage with the respective location. Such presentations include their highly acclaimed exhibition The Collectors in the Danish and Nordic pavilions at the 53rd Biennale di Venezia (2009), the exhibition Silent Wishes and Broken Dreams at the Bavarian State Opera (2011) and A Space Called Public (2013), in which they explored the significance of public space in Munich. For “Schaufenster,” the Sammlung Goetz’s new exhibition venue on Pacellistraße, the duo has developed an exhibition concept with works from the collection that not only engages with the location but also incorporates works by other artists. With knitted images by Rosemarie Trockel, staged self-portraits by Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, and Tom Sachs’ burnt-in oversized dollar bill, the duo has created a parcours between private and public space, raising questions concerning the commercialization of art, the fragility of human identities and the growing loneliness of people in an increasingly harsh world.

With works by Elmgreen & Dragset, Richard Prince, Tom Sachs, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel.

(Concept: Elmgreen & Dragset; curator: Karsten Löckemann)