It's been a while i meant to post these pictures which are part of an exhibition in the National Museum of Art in Copenhagen, they're related to a comment i've made in that modern art post - "For me it was always about feeling pleased by its beauty, or shocked by its ugliness or just anything at all, with a very few exceptions". I'm no longer talking about understanding or not modern art, but for feeling something through it, and these pieces above certainly had some effect on me. The ensemble is carefully separated from any other piece in the museum, there's this infirmary door, no sign on it, you even wonder what's behind that door. Then you look through the glass and you actually see people resting in those cold hospital beds. It looks so real. Here's what i read in the museum afterwards. It says:
'Shhhhh!' Is this the sound of solicitude and consideration? Or rather a reminder about our disturbing entrance into the room? This work is about how we relate to our surroundings. The hospital's anonymous architecture and solemn atmosphere can call to mind the mood at a museum. However, unlike the museum room, it's difficult to maintain a distance from the hospital ward. Memories, compassion and discomfort impinge.
Please, keep quiet! surprises us. The experience can be intense and unexpected. This piece shares its surprising effect with the trompe l'oeil genre. Trompe l'oeil is an illusionist technique where the observer is 'deceived' and led to believe that a painted object is real.
Whereas the seventeenth century's works often referred in a playful and witty fashion to themselves, Elmgreen and Dragset's mission is more extrovertedly critical. Both then and now, however, the art works generate a need for renegotiating our perceptions of reality. Read more on this piece here and more about the trompe l'oeil technique here.