What happens after the party is over? That is the question Elmgreen & Dragset explores with the installation that now moves into one of The 9 Spaces at the Aarhus art museum ARoS. With this donation from the New Carlsberg Foundation, the Danish/Norwegian artists’ duo joins the line-up of leading international names, including Bill Viola and Pipilotti Rist, that visitors can encounter on the subterranean basement level of ARoS.
After the party
Too Late recreates a dimly lit gay nightclub the morning after a raucous night. The disco ball has been taken down and lies abandoned on the floor, while the DJ’s last track runs on repeat. The installation features a number of objects that are commonly found in a nightclub: a bar, a DJ booth and mirrors as well as the debris from the fictitious party: empty glasses and ashtrays filled with cigarette butts. At the centre of the room is a stripper’s pole, and the walls are adorned with homoerotic mirror tableaux. The singer greets visitors with the sombre words ‘too late’.
Subtle social critique
Elmgreen & Dragset are known for works that often simulate everyday objects and settings, where some of the elements have been modified to create a scene that is simultaneously familiar and alienating. Too Late is no exception; here, Elmgreen & Dragset create the illusion of a nightclub – a familiar place for many, which popular culture portrays as a free space for individuals to cast their inhibitions aside and leave mundane concerns behind. It is also a space where we can play with identities and invent new stories about ourselves. In Too Late, however, the mood is ambivalent, because we missed the party and are faced only with the detritus.
The installation articulates the tension between inclusion and exclusion, between humour and melancholy. Behind what may seem a slightly ironic and kitschy fiction lies a critical look at contemporary culture, which may seem like a celebration of excessive consumption motivated by an eternal quest for entertainment and escapism and a desire for inclusion in the social community. In this light, the abandoned nightclub seems an open question: What happens after the party is over?
The director of ARoS, Erlend G. Høyersten, explains:
‘The installation combines the duo’s theatrical and spectacular dramatic approach with a subtle social critique and contains a layer of loneliness and melancholy that resonates especially with modern life. The nightclub goes from being a utopian space to becoming a space where stable identities are up for negotiation,’ says Erlend G. Høyersten.
A permanent place in the collection
According to Erlend G. Høyersten, Elmgreen & Dragset have enjoyed widespread international recognition in recent years, but Danish art museums have purchased relatively few of the duo’s works. With this donation, Too Late is established as part of ARoS’s permanent collection as part of The 9 Spaces, which are dedicated to total installations. Together with Olafur Eliasson, the duo is the only Nordic representation featured alongside Bill Viola, Tony Oursler, Pipilotti Rist, Mariko Mori, Shirin Neshat and James Turell – some of the most prominent names in international contemporary art.
‘The museum has long wanted to acquire Elmgreen & Dragset for its collection, not least for The 9 Spaces. It is essential, not only for ARoS but for Danish museums in general, to ensure that key works by the artists’ duo are included in Danish collections – also outside the Copenhagen area,’ says Erlend G. Høyersten.
