Elmgreen & Dragset the Berlin based, Danish artist duo, who created the ‘Boy on a Rocking-horse’ sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square is installing a new work at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.
The artwork titled, Van Gogh’s Ear, 2016, consists of a 1950s-style upright kidney shaped swimming pool which includes a stainless steel ladder, lights, and a diving board. The ‘Readymade’ has been commissioned by Public Art Fund and Tishman Speyer and will be on view from Wednesday, April 13 – June 3, 2016. It will then travel to China with the help of the K11 Art Foundation.
“For many years, Elmgreen & Dragset have been masters of the unforgettably uncanny object. With its dramatic scale, wildly incongruous setting, and cleverly macabre title, Van Gogh’s Ear promises to be perhaps their wittiest installation yet,” said Nicholas Baume, Public Art Fund director and chief curator.
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, based in Berlin and London, have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. They have held numerous solo exhibitions in art institutions worldwide, including Serpentine Gallery and Tate Modern in London, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, ZKM Museum of Modern Art in Karlsruhe, The Power Plant in Toronto, MUSAC in Léon, and Kunsthalle Zürich. Their work has been included in the Berlin, Sao Paulo, Gwangju, Moscow, Singapore and Istanbul biennials, and in 2009 they received a special mention for their exhibition “The Collectors” in The Nordic and Danish Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Amongst their most well known works are “Prada Marfa” – a full scale replica of a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texan desert, and “Short Cut” – a car and a caravan breaking through the ground which was first shown in Milan and now resides in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.