Double vision

Duplication and dysfunction at a new solo show from Elmgreen & Dragset

Citing conjoined vases from the Qing dynasty as visual inspiration, Elmgreen & Dragset’s new Coupled lamp, created for their first major show with Pace Gallery, is both a sculpture and a functioning lamp. Featuring a porcelain base of two gently intersecting spheres, which taper into two necks supporting light bulbs, covered by a white cotton lampshade shaped like a lemniscate, the lamp joins a long line of Elmgreen & Dragset artworks that have employed double geometry to evocative effect. It is one of eight new pieces (including two unique rugs and a faux fireplace) showing at Pace New York, in a dysfunctional domestic scene that is sure to set our imaginations alight – calling to mind ‘The Collectors’, the artists’ double exhibition in the Nordic and Danish pavilions at the 2009

Venice Biennale. Unusually for an artwork, it will be available in four colourways (each an edition of three), with names that offer a Prada Marfaesque embrace and critique of popular commerce: mint green, dove blue, millennial pink and eggshell white. Coupled lamp, 2021, is part of Elmgreen & Dragset’s ‘The Nervous System’, showing until 18 December at Pace New York, pacegallery.com; elmgreen-dragset.com

Elmgreen & Dragset’s first major show at Pace New York sees the Berlin-based artists create an almost surreal depiction of a dysfunctional home within the gallery’s walls, and includes eight new pieces, such as Coupled lamp (left and below, in mint green)