Isn't it as if we have once again forgotten that reality is not purely the sum of facts by which we are constantly confronted ? Only through glimpsing a drama unfolding itself on a micro level, something almost unreal, yet familiar, like noticing a sparrow dying in the far corner of a public square, do we suddenly, for a split second, perceive the surroundings in a different way. The high rise buildings; the rush hour traffic; the gray colored pavements become a battle field for life and death, a surreal stage for our perverted fascinations and for all those inner worries of ours. Then, in the next moment, we once again get absorbed by the streams of media news. We watch tendencies change. We take a look at the numbers and figures delivered by the quarterly statistics, which give us an idea of death tolls and inflation rates. We get to know of cities rising from the ground and new economies emerging. And on the basis of such an overload of information and changing modes and fashions, we draw our conclusions, we react or turn our heads away. There is only little room left in our lives for what some label "The Unreal".
Elmgreen & Dragset's exhibition "Disgrace" consists of two sculptures, which twist the old theme of masters & servants. A white Rolls Royce Corniche has been dipped into tar and rolled in feathers. Like an outlaw it sadly spins around on its turntable car display. At the other end of the room the audience is welcomed by a maid who is dressed in an emblematic black and white maidens dress. She is humbly looking down to the ground, awaiting your orders. Her body is cast in bronze and covered in real gold. She is a trophy like the Oscar statuette or an ancient relic. The sculptures are an investigation into the dangerous layers of desire and ritually based power structures that are embedded in our social roles and in the objects which surround us in a time of late capitalist decadence. It is as if Georges Bataille would meet Charles Ray or Rainer Werner Fassbinder would meet Jeff Koons. Caught in the act we, the voyeurs, find ourselves in the middle of a scenario, which exudes a repressed, uncanny sexuality, like in a Hitchcock or Bergman movie - camp but controlled.