October 2025
MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique is pleased to announce October 2025, Elmgreen & Dragset’s second presentation at Pièce Unique in Paris.
For this exhibition, Elmgreen & Dragset present a hyperrealistic sculpture of a gallery assistant installed directly in Pièce Unique’s window, visible to anyone passing along rue de Turenne. Normally hidden behind the exhibition space, the gallery’s office is brought forward: a large desk occupies the front of the gallery, behind which the assistant slumps forward, apparently asleep.
Visible through Pièce Unique’s window both day and night, passersby are invited to contemplate the woman’s situation. Who is she? Is she napping, or shutting herself off from the outside world for a moment? Is she exhausted, or simply refusing to do her job, like a modern-day Bartleby? The ambiguity leaves space for multiple readings. As with much of Elmgreen & Dragset’s work, October 2025 blurs the line between fiction and reality, pulling the viewer into the story and prompting them to form their own narrative.
The Artist
Michael Elmgreen was born in 1961 in Copenhagen, Denmark; Ingar Dragset was born in 1969 in Trondheim, Norway; they have been working as an artist duo since 1995. They live and work in Berlin. With the intention of revealing and redefining the art world, its cultural institutions and their fruition from the public, Elmgreen & Dragset draw inspiration from the everyday world, criticizing through a strong and unsettling sense of humor the contemporary social and political structure. They are well known for their numerous public architectural and performative installations, including Prada Marfa, a Prada shop located in the middle of the desert of Texas realized in 2005, and Short Cut, where due cars were rising out of Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in 2003, produced together with Fondazione Nicola Trussardi. Elmgreen & Dragset constantly challenge their public and its imaginary through the creation of images that are as shocking as spectacular.
Elmgreen & Dragset were appointed curators of the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017). They were awarded a Special Mention at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) for The Collectors at the Danish and Nordic Pavilions and won the prestigious Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2002).