ELMGREEN & DRAGSET
HAN

HELSINGØR, DENMARK
PERMANENT INSTALLATION SINCE 2012

Han was commissioned as a public sculpture for a site in Denmark, located in front of the world heritage castle “Kronborg”, which is the place where Shakespeare imagined Hamlet to live. Situated on a pier in the harbor, the male figure is gazing out over the sea. The position of the young man sitting on the stone is the same as that of The Little Mermaid and the stone has the same shape as the one upon which she sits – but this stone is made of polished stainless steel, as is the figure. The sculpture has a hydraulic mechanism so it can shut its eyes once an hour, to the surprise of those who happen to be standing in front of it at that very moment.
HAN, 2012
Polished stainless steel with mechanical eye movements
190 x 140 x 90 cm

© Images Anders Sune Berg

FEATURED ARTIST

ELMGREEN & DRAGSET
Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen, born 1961 in Copenhagen, Denmark and Ingar Dragset, born 1969 in Trondheim, Norway, live and work in Berlin) pursue questions of identity and belonging from a socio-cultural perspective in their artistic practice. Since 1995, they have been working together at the interface of art, design, and architecture with a focus on sculpture and installation. They are interested in the discourse that can arise when objects are re-contextualized and when the normal modes for presenting the art are altered. Their works often challenge the institutional context in which they are exhibited – both in a spatial ma...
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