Art show has plenty of room for sarcasm

The Well Fair continues the artists’ practice of structural displacement and transforms the museum’s great hall into a fictional art fair. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are a pair of Scandinavian artists who have gained global acclaim for a series of works that blend architecture, art and design to explore and redefine space and its numerous possibilities of definition and function.

Perhaps their best-known project is Prada Marfa, a permanent installation inaugurated in 2005 in the middle of the West Texas desert, near the town of Marfa. The display, modeled on an outlet of the fashion brand, is surrounded by desert and has neither entrance nor exit.

In their first exhibition in the Chinese mainland, Elmgreen and Dragset continue their practice of structural displacement to merge one familiar space with another. The Well Fair, on display at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing until April 17, transforms the museum’s great hall into a fictional art fair.

They divide the space into rectangular booths and display more than 80 of their works from the past two decades in a particular way: in some cases, crated, wrapped, half-installed or leaned against the walls. “It looks as if the fair has either just ended or not yet begun,” said Elmgreen, a Dane.

The director of UCCA, Philip Tinari, met them in 2013 and took them to the space, since they commonly find inspiration from the spatial features of the venues where they show their art.

“We were shocked at the dimension of the space,” Elmgreen said. “‘This is big enough to host an art fair’, we said.”

And then they prepared for the show for two years.