"Some people find a certain cruelty in parts of our work," say the rising conceptualist-collaborators Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, "but they are definitely not more vicious than any real life experiences." Since 1995, Elmgreen and Dragset have tackled issues of privatization, gentrification, social alienation and the dismantling of social welfare. For their first show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in 2001 they papered over the windows with the announcement "Opening Soon Prada." Pursuing and inverting this theme, in 2005 they installed a mocked-up Prada store on a deserted road near Marfa, Texas. They have recreated hospitals and prison cells, and have reconfigured gallery spaces to spatially deter their would-be audience. "Our aim is to investigate some of the power structures that these spaces derive from, and by exchanging and replacing some of these structures, show how fragile they actually are." This monograph is the first extensive survey of their work to date.
Massimiliano Gioni Bücher
The varied practice of Paul Chan (born 1973) includes paintings, drawings, video animations and font design, as well as critical writing. The characters in his works are animated beings, jerking and stuttering as they are violently thrust into the clumsy reel--or -real---of history. Chan explores the intellectual and sexual animus that courses through our collective language and consciousness, drawing on sources as varied as the King James Bible, Marquis de Sade and Samuel Beckett. Part of the 2000 Words series, conceived and commissioned by Massimiliano Gioni, and published by the Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, 2000 Words: Paul Chan presents the entirety of the artist's works in the Dakis Joannou Collection and includes an essay by Stephen Squibb that reveals the solitary image and its uncanny animation in Chan's work.