Lot 137: ELMGREEN & DRAGSET

Untitled (Prada Marfa)
This work is number four from an edition of five plus two artist’s proofs.

160 x 204 cm (62 7/8 x 80 3/8 in)

photographic print on Dibond

2007

Galerie Perrotin, Paris
Private Collection, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Appropriating the form of a Prada Store, Prada Marfa is a permanently
installed sculpture by the Berlin- and London-based artists Elmgreen
& Dragset. With their characteristic subversive satirical wit, the artists
readjust our understanding of the familiar in their installations and
sculptures. The work occupies a space just off U.S. Route 90 about 60km
northwest of the city of Marfa, Texas. The installation echoes a Prada
store not simply in form but also in content. Real shoes and handbags,
donated by Miuccia Prada from the autumn/winter collection of 2005,
sit in its window display; the company even allowed the artists to use its
trademark. The only departure from reality is that the door of the shop
does not open. Upon its completion, the sculpture became the first
individual Prada store in Texas.
Prada Marfa is an ambitious extension of an earlier work in which
Elmgreen & Dragset installed signs in the windows of a Chelsea gallery
in New York that read “Prada, Coming Soon”. This work was realised at
the time when the influx of designer shops forced the SoHo art scene to
relocate to Chelsea.