Berlin-based artistic duo Elmgreen & Dragset has opened a captivating new exhibition at Pace Gallery in Los Angeles that uses a rare neurological condition as inspiration for exploring how we perceive reality in the digital age. "The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" draws its title from dysmetropsia, a condition that distorts size and perception, causing objects to appear dramatically smaller or larger than they actually are.
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, who have been collaborating since 1995, are renowned for their ability to transform ordinary objects and spaces into thought-provoking art installations. The duo is perhaps best known for creating Prada Marfa, a full-sized luxury boutique permanently installed in the middle of the Texas desert. This iconic work exemplifies their ongoing fascination with recontextualizing familiar objects to challenge how we interpret and perceive our surroundings.
The Los Angeles exhibition, marking the artists' first solo show in the city, immediately immerses visitors in a disorienting experience. Upon entering the gallery, viewers encounter "September 2025," a hyper-realistic silicone figure of a gallery attendant who appears to be dozing at her desk. Next to the sleeping figure sits an untouched cup of coffee and a neat stack of books, creating an uncanny scene that blurs the line between reality and artifice.
As visitors venture deeper into the exhibition space, they discover a series of striking white marble sculptures created in two distinct scales. These figures, carved with meticulous attention to detail, depict anonymous individuals wearing headphones and virtual reality headsets. The sculptures capture a sense of perpetual distraction, showing people completely absorbed in their chosen technologies and disconnected from their physical surroundings.
Complementing the marble figures are works from the artists' "Sky Target" series, a collection of circular pieces mounted on the gallery walls. These sophisticated works combine mirrors with cloudy expanses arranged in various patterns, including stripes and concentric rings. The reflective surfaces capture fragments of the gallery's wide, open space and pieces of the sculptures, but present them through a deliberately distorted perspective that enhances the exhibition's disorienting effect.
The exhibition's central theme resonates powerfully with contemporary concerns about digital technology's impact on human experience. As society grapples with the often troubling effects of living in an increasingly digital world, Elmgreen & Dragset encourage viewers to consider how physical presence shapes our understanding of reality. Their work suggests that even without technological mediation, our perception of the world can become uncanny and unreliable.
"The Other David," a marble sculpture measuring 33 7/16 by 59 1/16 by 33 7/16 inches, and "Close," another marble work sized at 71 1/8 by 26 by 20 1/4 inches, demonstrate the artists' masterful manipulation of scale and form. These pieces, along with the variable-dimension "September 2025" installation, create a cohesive exploration of how size, perspective, and context influence our interpretation of reality.
"The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" will remain on view at Pace Gallery through October 25, giving visitors ample opportunity to experience the duo's latest commentary on perception and reality. Like Lewis Carroll's famous tale that inspired the exhibition's title, the show invites viewers to question whether what they're experiencing is real or part of an elaborate, hallucinatory dream.
