Elmgreen & Dragset
Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK
Elmgreen & Dragset, (Un)Lucky Strike (2008), installation view
The party’s long over at Victoria Miro, but the remnants of revelry remain — cigarette butts and empty beer bottles strewn about, debris swept into a corner and drinks abandoned on top of a speaker. A lone jacket hangs in the coat room amid hundreds of empty hangers; a single balloon lies wilted on the dance floor, illuminated by a blinking spotlight. The installation is by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, the artists who installed a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texas desert and who transplanted the waiting rooms and sterile corridors of the welfare state to the Serpentine Gallery. This time, they’ve transformed Victoria Miro into a club called ‘The Mirror’, evoking the loneliness of the end of a party and the alienation of another failed attempt at social connection.
The Romantics viewed ancient ruins with melancholy; these clubland vestiges, while not very Romantic, still impart a sense of futility and sadness. This sadness isn’t just about being alone after everyone’s left, it’s also about the loneliness of being surrounded by others and still failing to establish real connections. The show speaks to the frustration of conversations yelped over thudding basslines, voices straining to surmount decibellic hurdles. It speaks to the disappointment of hollow exchanges repeated again and again to no avail (a choreography brilliantly visualized by Maya Deren in her 1946 film Ritual in Transfigured Time). It suggests that all tomorrow’s parties have an inevitable ending: ‘When midnight comes around / She’ll turn once more to Sunday’s clown / And cry behind the door.’
It’s the fodder of a Smiths song. Likewise, the show feels a bit gloomy, but also resonant and clever. For example, a mirror on the gallery’s ceiling reveals an inaccessible second level with a VIP area and spinning turntables, titled ‘All Those Parties I was Never Invited to…’ But the artists’ cleverness sometimes subverts the power of the project, breaking the illusion of the transformed gallery space. The Mirror’s lavatory is one example: in addition to its unrealistic layout and fake graffiti (‘Fashion fags go home!’), the feet of two mannequins are visible in one stall. The inclusion is cute, maybe, but also silly and distracting.
Mostly, the club’s familiar, illusory space feels melancholic and meaningful. Then you happen upon a mannequin in a tracksuit and trainers. You can’t help but wonder if the project is really profound, or merely a mockery of toilet-stall liaisons and booze-soaked partygoers weepy and alone at the end of the night.
Yet it’s hard not be a little skeptical of the exhibition, given that it comes from the fashionable Berlin-based duo Elmgreen and Dragset and the Victoria Miro Gallery, which hosts its own parties and private openings for the glamorous and deep-pocketed. In this sense, is the gallery so different from The Mirror? Are the black walls and a disco ball even necessary?
Natasha Degen
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