Elmgreen & Dragset: Die Zugezogenen

Museum Haus Lange is pleased to present Die Zugezogenen, the first solo exhibition by Elmgreen & Dragset in the Rhineland. With this exhibition, Elmgreen & Dragset transform the venue back into what it was originally intended to be: a family home. The artist duo stages the moment when a fictional German family moves in. Having previously relocated to Britain, the family has now decided to move back to Germany following the Brexit vote. Elmgreen & Dragset combine their own artworks with ready-made furniture, objects and artifacts in order to turn Haus Lange into the family’s new domestic setting. Some items are already unpacked and put in place, while others remain semi-wrapped or in boxes. Near the “For Sale” sign in the front yard, the family’s old Jaguar is parked outside with a roof rack on top, still filled with items from the move.

Rather than a clear and linear storyline, Elmgreen & Dragset opt for a more abstract narrative. Like the experimental French nouveau roman of the 1950s and ’60s, the exhibition brings together different histories and time periods and presents them side-by-side in a non-chronological manner. The collapse of time in the exhibition parallels the potential breakdown of Europe today, signaling that contemporary values are not what they were
at the time when modernism first introduced utopian visions for new living modes. Mies van der Rohe began plans for Haus Lange in 1927; the Bauhaus-style building exemplifies the modernist architectural principles of functionality, transparency and rationality. Presenting the family’s move as a symbol of a changing Europe, the exhibition also nods to the resulting nostalgia that infuses large parts of the European population in the face of the seemingly insurmountable challenges of the future.
 With Die Zugezogenen, Elmgreen & Dragset continue an ongoing tradition of site-related works at the Haus Lange, one that began in the early 1960s. Their intervention transforms the building as a whole, emphasizing the tension between private and public, and drawing on the dialogue between architecture, art and society that is inherent to this place.

Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen *1961 in Copenhagen & Ingar Dragset *1969 in Trondheim) often present already existing artworks in new combinations and settings, creating site-specific configurations that generate new meanings as the works are positioned in different contexts. At Haus Lange, most of the ground floor and a portion of the upper floor are metamorphosed into a dining room, study, living room, bathroom and children’s room, playing with the idea of the building’s initial conception as a family home. Certain pieces of furniture—some of which are original to the house—align with the building’s minimal aesthetics, while others reflect opposite styles. Visitors are able to walk through and peruse the rooms to make their own interpretations and create their own narratives. Literal and symbolic realities collide with clues and overlap, as doubled and mirrored elements weave throughout the spaces. The inherited mixes with the acquired and the usually unseen is revealed and layered with traces of what might have come before.

Die Zugezogenen can be translated in English as The Newcomers.

Elmgreen & Dragset have re-imagined the domestic in previous exhibitions such as The Collectors (Venice Biennale, 2009) and Tomorrow (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2013). With The Collectors, the duo curated an exhibition that brought together over two dozen international artists to recast the existing architecture 
of the neighbouring Danish and Nordic Pavilions as the homes of an eccentric art collector and a dysfunctional family. Tomorrow morphed the Victoria and Albert Museum’s former textile galleries into an apartment belonging to a fictional, elderly and disillusioned architect named Norman Swann.

Curators: Magdalena Holzhey together with Irina Raskin

Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm