Elmgreen & Dragset

For their exhibition Stillleben mit Gemüse (Still Live with Vegetables), Elmgreen & Dragset use the Städel Museum as their canvas. The exhibition engages in a close dialogue with both the permanent collection and the architecture of the building: the artists’ sculptural works and installations are not presented as isolated objects but respond directly to specific locations within the museum.

At the centre of the exhibition, visitors encounter two large-scale installations: The Cloud—a high-end restaurant—and Garden of Eden—an office landscape. Positioned directly above one another on two separate floors, these works articulate tensions between labour and luxury, aspiration and illusion. Together, they map out familiar yet contrasting environments from our everyday lives. Further works interact with the museum’s collection, which spans around 700 years, and appear throughout the various exhibition spaces as subtle interventions, unexpectedly emerging within the existing displays.

Stillleben mit Gemüse is a tongue-in-cheek title that refers to a painting from the Städel collection. Neither still lives nor vegetables are typically associated with contemporary art and audience engagement, yet Elmgreen & Dragset propose that this might only be a matter of perspective. Across the museum, the works reflect on the role of the audience and the many dimensions of perception.

The Berlin-based Danish-Norwegian duo Elmgreen & Dragset have collaborated since the mid-1990s and are among the most influential contemporary artists working today. Their practice combines sculpture and installation, often in relation to architecture, to create charged environments that expose social power structures, institutional conventions, and everyday behavioural patterns. Their figurative sculptures are typically positioned to introduce narrative cues to the spaces they inhabit, inviting the audience to participate in an active game of storytelling.

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