Elmgreen & Dragset Go Prada Mode
Inside a makeshift cinema, the artists fix our gaze away from the screen and onto “The Audience”.
As the art world rolls into London for Frieze week, Prada joins in on the cultural conversation. For the thirteenth iteration of Prada Mode, the Milanese fashion house reunites with Elmgreen & Dragset, the acclaimed duo behind the cult Prada Marfa, for a new immersive installation, titled “The Audience”.
Within a makeshift cinema inside the newly restored Town Hall in King’s Cross, a hazy film loops on-screen. Peppered throughout the seats are five hyperrealistic sculptures of moviegoers, posed in expressions of fascination, frustration and distraction, while another sculpture, lounging in the mezzanine, wears an apathetic gaze with her phone in-hand.
By redirecting the attention of visitors away from the screen and toward the immediate environment, the piece reconsiders what it means to see and be seen in the “age of image overload.” “As artists, we have often been interested in making exhibitions where the audience’s attention is pulled in conflicting directions, spaces that would encourage a degree of uncertainty and where the spectator has to actively navigate seemingly familiar environments in new ways,” the artists explain.
“Being part of an audience in a cinema or theatre implies being one of many, of sharing an experience, a moment within a spatial choreography. In ‘The Audience’, that shared experience becomes visible and the audience becomes part of the narrative itself.”
Prada Mode London will continue to unfold over the next several days, with a lineup of screenings, performances and talks complementing the installation. The members-only preview of “The Audience” is currently underway, with the public experience opening from October 17 to 19.
