In Denmark the contemporary art duo Ingar Dragset and Michael Elmgreen feature large. Some of you might remember them as the team that created a stir at the last Venice Biennale largely because of their realistic portrayal of an art collector drowned in his own swimming pool. They were also presciently featured in the 5th SCAPE 2008, in Lyttelton of all places.
Among the early Danish paintings and other international works (rather provocatively labelled “foreign art”) at the National Gallery of Denmark, a large room accessed through swinging hospital doors gave way to a typical Dragset and Elmgreen installation. Please keep quiet from 2003 presents four hospital beds with one empty and the other three occupied by male patients. It’s similar to the work in Boris’s bunker that we have previously posted on.
Our curiosity was piqued when we looked closely at the hand of one of the wax patients and saw a crumpled ball of A4 paper. Now, we know a Martin Creed when we see one, even in a fake hospital bed, in a Danish Museum in Copenhagen.
Images: Top and bottom left Dragset and Elmgreen’s installation, Please keep quiet (detail). Bottom right Martin Creed’s Work No 88.
