Artists who can surprise

Monika Sosnowska

She is best known for huge skeletal architectural forms and exploitig the imperceptible grace of their designs. Installations which balance on the border of sculpture and architectural shaping of space are made to fit into a specific place and context. Her works intrigue and surprise because of their form, scale and a entanglement of the real world and imagination. They crumple and bend. They are often meaningless and useless but for being removed from their context. Supporting structures, meant to be solid and stong, are most telling when they fail so she made them plastic and flexible. They are however animated with something which ghostly resonates from these structures. It's not visible. It is just in memory. Everyone would understand her works of art differently basing on individual experience. She often touches these elements of architecture which are burdened with a mistake and overlooks aspects of the city's functioning unsuccessful realizations such as the impermanence of buildings, while reaching in her art for the psychedelic properties of architecture. For example, she carried out the work "Fountain", which was limited to the streak on the ceiling and the stains on the carpet created by dripping water.

She also built a concrete, contorted block spouting with black water. This object seemed to be a defectively designed decorative element from the 70s, which as a result of the passage of time fell into a caricature of ruin.

Her works are always intriguing and incorporate an element of surprise, so that the viewer wandering through them begins to lose his sense of orientation and to wonder whether his surroundings are real or fictional. As one of her works, she obscured part of a room in total darkness, depriving it of its materiality; the illusion was enhanced by the fact that the viewer could only peer into the room through a glass door.

Probably one of the most interesting works is a series of four decreasing rooms, old-fashioned painted in pattern reminiscent of those from the Victorian era. The artist, inspired by the adventures of Alice in Wonderland, decided to build four rooms, each corresponding to Alice's changing height as she shrinks. She designed them as an enfilade and painted them in Victorian style, with each room getting smaller and smaller until the last one was just big enough for a mouse. Later she built a labirynt made out of white cubes. She also built enourmous, several meters high, with green covered, typical for construction from the communist era, paneling, walls, corridor. The viewer, thinking that it is extremely long, succumbed to optical illusion - the corridor was designed to translate the principles of a convergent perspective into the third dimension.

Elmgreen & Dragset

Their works explore the relationship between art, architecture and design. They redefined the way in which art is presented and experienced while making emotional and figurative sculptures and installations in an extraordinary new large-scale.

They are playful as well as provocative, humorous but probe for a deeper response. It is often difficult to decide what to do with their work and how to react. Perfect example would be a punchbag hanging in the Berlin studio of their company. As you get closer to it, you notice that its blue fabric is decorated with the stars of the European Union. One would struggle if to punch it as the object suggests or embrance it as the political leanings might prefer? And, if it’s a piece of art, should you even punch it in the first place? Provoking has been their mission ever since they began their partnership. They challenged the way in which public should interact with art. They have transformed galleries into nightclubs, drawing rooms and eerie hospital waiting areas. They’ve placed diving boards out of windows,dropped a Prada store into the middle of Texas desert and gatecrashed a favoured viewing spot of the Statue of Liberty by installing a massive and unusable telescope.

Objects which they make invite and deny participation in equal measure (swimming pools are emptied, diving boards orientated vertically, sinks dysfunctional). Most of what they do is perfecting the idea, sourcing quality materials and ensuring the concept works within the space. Good examples are well-known projects like Van Gogh's Ear in Rockefeller Plaza in New York and Prada Marfa along highway 90 in the middle of Texas desert.

They produce beguiling spatial scenarios that unveil the power structures embedded in the everyday designs that surround us. With their minimal aesthetic they are regarded as sculptural phenomena.

Their work is destructive but playful. In 2001, when they were asked to exhibit at the Tanya Bonakdar gallery in New York’s Chelsea, they decided to comment on the area’s creeping gentrification. Aware that the downtown Guggenheim had just been redeveloped into a Prada store, they covered the gallery with a facade that says: “Opening soon – Prada!” It worked but not in the way art is supposed to work. Clients called to say how sorry they were that they were going out of business and nobody bothered entering the gallery itself.

Before their upcoming show at the Whitechapel gallery in Lodnon, they have rebuilt the gallery’s ground floor level, turning it into a room with a completely different function. It’s another comment on gentrification and will showcase their brilliance at transforming architectural spaces.