The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome: Elmgreen & Dragset bring surreal scale shifts to Los Angeles

This fall, Pace Gallery Los Angeles will stage The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, the first solo exhibition in the city by Berlin-based duo Elmgreen & Dragset. Running from September 13th through October 25th, 2025, the immersive presentation explores the slippages of perception through acts of doubling, resizing, and spatial reduplication. For the artists, celebrated internationally for their provocative installations, the show becomes both a meditation on the instability of reality and a milestone, marking three decades of working together.

Elmgreen and Dragset art as distortion and play

At the heart of The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome lies an exploration of scale and perception. Taking its name from the neurological condition that causes distortions in size and distance, the exhibition translates psychological disorientation into physical form. Pace’s Los Angeles space becomes a stage where artworks appear in full scale in the main gallery, then reappear in half-scale within a replica of the same space next door. This doubling creates a mise en abyme effect, collapsing boundaries between real and imagined dimensions.

Sky targets and reflective illusions

Among the highlights is a new installment from Elmgreen & Dragset’s Sky Target series. These circular works depict fragments of drifting clouds painted on mirror-polished stainless steel disks. By partially obscuring the skies with reflective surfaces, the artists fold the viewer into the image, merging atmosphere with self-reflection. Each piece references a specific location tied to the duo’s travels, grounding the ethereal compositions in lived experience.

Another wall-based project, dubbed the stripe paintings, juxtaposes images of contrails cutting through the sky with mirrored bands. The rhythm of sky and reflection shifts with each step a visitor takes, a dynamic interplay of opacity, transparency, and self-awareness.

An invitation into perceptive contradictions

The sequence begins even before visitors enter the exhibition, with a hyperrealistic sculpture of a gallery assistant seemingly asleep at the reception desk. From there, reality bends: objects contract and expand, doubling across the two spaces as though conjured in her dream. By unsettling the scale of familiar encounters, Elmgreen & Dragset invite audiences into an environment where perception is no longer stable but endlessly shifting.

Marking both their thirtieth anniversary as collaborators and the twentieth anniversary of their now-iconic Prada Marfa installation, The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome demonstrates how Elmgreen & Dragset continue to challenge expectations. Through distortion, reflection, and dislocation, the duo reminds us that in both art and life, perspective is everything.

Join us for an intimate dialogue with Elmgreen & Dragset as they explore how Landscapes evolved from their past works, why even wilderness feels curated, and what it means for nature to exist only through perception.