The Musée d’Orsay hosts L’Addition, a site-specific exhibition by Elmgreen & Dragset, open from October 15th, 2024, to February 2nd, 2025. Known for their provocative, immersive installations, the artist duo transforms the museum’s iconic sculpture nave with a radical architectural intervention, inviting viewers to experience the space from unexpected perspectives. In L’Addition, Elmgreen & Dragset construct a large suspended platform mirroring the museum’s tiled floor, creating the surreal illusion of an upside-down gallery space.
This inverted world houses new figurative sculptures, each exploring modern masculinity and linking contemporary themes with the museum’s historical artworks. For example, Boy with Drone shows a young figure holding a drone aloft, juxtaposed against traditional sculptures of figures with birds or musical instruments, emphasizing today’s relationship with technology. Another piece, David, depicts a Berlin DJ with headphones, nodding to the timeless connection between music and personal identity while leaving his imaginary soundtrack up to viewers.
Beyond the platform, Elmgreen & Dragset’s sculptures further engage with themes of solitude, technology, and exploration of new frontiers. The Choice captures a young boy poised on a diving board, balancing on the brink of action, while This Is How We Play Together, Fig. 3, a child in a VR headset rendered in marble, contrasts with classical sculptures to suggest the worlds technology opens for today’s youth. Meanwhile, The Examiner, Fig. 3, a figure with a camera among visitors, reflects the way modern audiences interact with and document art.
From the mezzanine, the top of the platform reveals a serene snow-covered landscape, crossed by a lone wanderer—a figure symbolizing introspection and the search for new viewpoints. With L’Addition, Elmgreen & Dragset craft an exhibition that is both visually striking and intellectually probing, creating a dialogue between past and present that invites visitors to consider evolving definitions of masculinity, solitude, and identity in a world of increasing technological complexity.
Don’t miss our interview with Elmgreen & Dragset, where they share their thoughts on the verbal, the visual and the metaverse in art and architecture.
Installation image of Elmgreen & Dragset: L’Addition, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photography by ANDREA ROSSETTI, 2024
Courtesy of MUSÉE D’ORSAY and PACE GALLERY
