Art duo Elmgreen & Dragset build modern house with lifelike occupants for latest exhibit in Seoul

The Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset have built an actual 140-square-meter (1,506 square feet) modern house inside the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Yongsan District, central Seoul, for their new exhibition.

″The Conversation,″ as part of ″The Cloud″ by Elmgreen & Dragset [AMOREPACIFIC MUSEUM OF ART]

Elmgreen & Dragset have made their home at the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Yongsan District, central Seoul. And no, not just figuratively.

The Scandinavian artist duo have built an actual 140-square-meter (1,506 square feet) modern house inside the museum’s exhibition hall.

Titled “Shadow House,” visitors are welcome to step inside and admire the minimalistic interior design. The house comes equipped with a kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom, bedrooms — and a boy, who is shown tapping his finger on the window.

The male mannequin is the protagonist in the “sad story” behind the house, which touches on loneliness. The parents seem to have left, deserting the house and leaving the boy alone, according to Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset in a news conference for the duo’s latest exhibition, “Spaces,” at the museum last week.

″Shadow House″ by Elmgreen & Dragset [AMOREPACIFIC MUSEUM OF ART]

“It’s almost like a horror movie setup,” Elmgreen said, adding that the Cannes-winning film “Parasite” (2019) was the inspiration behind the piece. “A house was the element that triggered the whole narrative, the whole story. These people wanted to come into that house and therefore, all the crime story happened.”

For the Amorepacific exhibition, Elmgreen & Dragset present five full-scale installations that are each a family house, a public pool, a restaurant, a kitchen and an atelier. It’s a celebration of the duo’s 30th anniversary and their largest Asian exhibition to date.

Elmgreen & Dragset speak during a press conference at the Amorepacific Museum of Art in central Seoul for the art duo's latest exhibition, ″Spaces″ last week. From left is Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. [AMOREPACIFIC MUSEUM OF ART]

Elmgreen & Dragset make sure that the everyday settings are true to size and also accurate to a tee, likening the museum space to a canvas.

The duo wanted to “play with the big volume” of the venue and transform it to the point that it would be “unrecognizable” as a museum. One way was by implementing fun Easter eggs inside the installations, like the wall mirror toward the exit of “Shadow House” that reads, “See you never!” in Korean.

“You will suddenly find a lot of narrative trails that connect the exhibition and create a sort of story,” Elmgreen said. “Our hope is that the viewer will continue the stories for themselves.”

″The Amorepacific Pool″ by Elmgreen & Dragset [AMOREPACIFIC MUSEUM OF ART]

Although Elmgreen & Dragset prefer to keep their artworks open to interpretation, the lifelike dummies placed in socially isolated situations could seem a little too real, amid the digital age.

The scenario is shown in “The Cloud,” an extravagant fine dining restaurant installation that’s completely empty, except for one woman who is on a video call with a male friend. He talkatively gossips to her about a romantic date gone wrong. Despite her undivided attention to the phone screen, her disinterested facial expression makes it evident that this exhibition should be regarded as a “celebration” of physical interactions, Elmgreen said.

″The Cloud″ by Elmgreen & Dragset [AMOREPACIFIC MUSEUM OF ART]

“The world does not consist of only the ‘Like’ [button] and ‘Don’t Like’ [on social media],” he continued. “The confusions and all the small variations of good and bad, and the ugly and beautiful are involved. We love when the audience make interpretations of the exhibition completely different than we intended because we learn from that and sometimes, it’s much more clever and much more fun.”

“Spaces” runs through Feb. 23 next year. The Amorepacific Museum of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day except Mondays. Tickets are 18,000 won ($13) for adults.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]