Famed for their witty sculptures and installations that toy with surroundings and contexts – you may well be familiar with their brilliant Texan installation, Prada Marfa – Scandinavian duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are once again displacing places and objects with their ‘German Barn’ project at this year’s Singapore Biennale.
Occupying a disused hangar at Old Kallang Airport, their life-size German barn – complete with four young chaps dressed in traditional lederhosen – is a typically subversive work from the duo who, much like us, don’t care too much for contrived, wanky art-speak so, over to them for their explanation of its meaning, “We make a full scale traditional German barn with hay stacks inside, and local guys dressed in Southern German lederhosen, hanging out like farm boys. Singapore is purely urban and has no agriculture. It is also rather homophobic so we assume there must be a link between homophobia and the lack of farm land, ha ha.” Well there you go…
Deutsche Scheune / German Barn, 2011
Steel, plywood, concrete, hay, taxidermied goat, tyre, tools, farming tools, antlers and performers with typical German styled farmers costumes
800 x 700 x 1400 m
Courtesy Elmgreen & Dragset
Elmgreen and Dragset quote via Crush Fanzine
