Elmgreen & Dragset - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 16, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen

  • Exhibited

    Malmö Konsthall, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, This is the first day of my life, 10 March - 6 May, 2007; La Biennale di Venezia, 53rd International Art Exhibition, Making Worlds, The Danish & Nordic Pavillions, Elmgreen & Dragset: The Collectors, June-November, 2009 (another example exhibited)

  • Literature

    Exhibition catalogue, Malmö Konsthall, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, This is the first day of my life, Ostfildern, 2007, p. 306 (illustrated); Exhibition catalogue, La Biennale di Venezia, 53rd International Art Exhibition, Making Worlds, The Danish & Nordic Pavillions, Elmgreen & Dragset: The Collectors, Venice, 2009, p. 28 (another example illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    The thought provoking, large scale, conceptual oeuvre of Scandinavian artistic duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset is a clever, subversive and humorous pastiche of the human socio-political condition. As the title suggests, the present lot, Marriage from 2004, is a work, highly loaded in meaning, comprised of two sets of mirrors, sinks and taps representing man and wife with perhaps the soap on the left hand sink a stand for the male genitalia. The couple’s union is wittily depicted by the shared drain piping which humorously and absurdly leads only to each basin, rendering each sink useless. Used to cleanse and bodily fluids, the shiny stainless drain pipe tubing with its sinuous, flowing curves, is an obvious reference to entangled spousal flesh on a first night of passion.
    The work of Elmgreen and Dragset, with Marriage as a prime example, visually and thematically builds upon the consequential oeuvre of the American artist Robert Gober and his evocative sculptural installations. Like Gober, who produced a celebrated body of work dealing with the sexual connotations and implications of the drain, Elmgreen and Dragset, in the present lot, masterfully uncover the uncanny in the everyday. Using familiar, apparently innocuous objects, they poignantly comment on the institution of marriage and the role sexuality plays in contemporary society.   
    Existing in three different versions, each with unique curves of the stainless steel drain pipe tubing, another work from the series is currently exhibited at Elmgreen and Dragset’s critically acclaimed pavilion at the Venice Biennale, The Collectors.

2

Marriage

2004
2 mirrors, 2 porcelain sinks, 2 taps, stainless steel tubing, soap.
Approximate overall installation dimensions: 178 x 168 x 81 cm. (70 x 66 x 32 in).
This work is unique from a series of three works, each with different curves in the stainless tubing. This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artists.

Estimate
£25,000 - 35,000 ‡♠

Sold for £55,250

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

17 Oct 2009
London