Powerless Structures, Fig 80
Two identical white flagpoles stand side by side, their ropes and hardware intact yet conspicuously bare, stripped of any flags or emblems. The work quietly subverts conventional symbols of authority and national identity, leaving the structures to stand as empty monuments to power without purpose. Elmgreen & Dragset transform a familiar architectural fixture into a meditation on absence, ideology, and the performative nature of institutional symbols.
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Contemporary Art Day Sale
October 17, 2013
Artists in conversation
Hans Haacke
German · b. 1936
Haacke similarly uses institutional symbols and objects to expose the ideological structures of power, creating conceptual installations that interrogate nationalism and authority through deliberate absence or subversion of familiar imagery.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Cuban-American · b. 1957
Gonzalez-Torres consistently employed minimalist sculptural forms and everyday objects to meditate on absence, loss, and political identity, creating quietly provocative works that drain familiar symbols of their expected content much like these bare flagpoles.
Maurizio Cattelan
Italian · b. 1960
Cattelan creates provocative sculptural installations that subvert institutional authority and conventional symbols of power, using humor and conceptual wit to transform recognizable objects into unsettling commentaries on ideology and social structures.
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