Berlin-based Nordic artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset’s solo exhibition L’Addition is currently on view at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The artist duo has deftly integrated their artworks into the Musée d'Orsay’s permanent display of the 19th-century sculptures. This permanent collection has inhabited the museum’s nave for over the past four decades, since the former Gare d’Orsay train station was first converted into a museum. The title—L’Addition—describes the artists’ approach to creating an exhibition in the museum’s already densely filled ground floor, intending to reconstruct the space if not sculpture itself. 

Elmgreen & Dragset playfully flips the nave upside down through their installations as well as their own sculptures. Through engaging the space directly, the duo transforms the museum space and the way it is normally perceived. In the same vein, the site-specific intervention highlights themes of evolving masculinities, suggesting, instead, their poetic and fragile nature. The dynamism of the statues contrasts their interior states, offering a look into the vulnerability of masculine youth in troubled times as well as the anxiety it may entail. The exhibition continues through February 2.