For the first time in its history, the Musée d’Orsay’s sculpture nave has undergone a radical transformation, devised by the artists Elmgreen & Dragset. While challenging conventional modes for displaying art, their exhibition L’Addition explores representations of contemporary masculinities in dialogue with the permanent collection, highlighting similarities and differences in artistic approaches to figuration.

At the heart of the nave, Elmgreen & Dragset have constructed a large platform suspended above the museum’s permanent display of 19th century sculpture, which has remained the same for nearly 40 years. The underside of the structure replicates the tiled floor below, creating the illusion of inverted space. From here, five of the artists’ figurative sculptures hang upside-down. Elmgreen & Dragset are known for their large-scale immersive installations that transform museum and gallery spaces into facsimiles of public and private environments. For their show at the Musée d’Orsay, however, they directly interact with the existing spatial features of the art institution.
v In a trans-historical encounter between past and present, L’Additionhighlights themes of evolving masculinities, solitude, and the magic of everyday situations. There is a certain beauty to be found in each of the fleeting moments captured in the works, whether it is in the pause before jumping from a diving board, the split second before a drone is sent off from a child’s hand, or a glimpse through the lens of a camera.

The artists emphasize both the contrasts and similarities between their works and the museum’s collection by depicting contemporary relationships with technology. While Eugène Guillaume’s Anacréongrasps a cup with a bird sitting on its rim, Elmgreen & Dragset’s figure holds a drone. Entitled Boy with Drone, he stands with an arm outstretched, ready to send the device out into the world—suggestive of technology as an extension of the self. The Musée d’Orsay collection includes several works featuring figures holding sculpted musical instruments, such as Paul Dubois’s Chanteur florentin du XVe siècle. Similarly, Elmgreen & Dragset’s David—a portrait of a Berlin DJ—wears headphones, but what he listens to is left for visitors to imagine.

Beyond the platform, Elmgreen & Dragset have placed works in the nave that subvert the typical relationship between viewer and artwork. The Choice shows a boy perched at the edge of a tall diving board, contemplating a jump. The Drawing, Fig. 3 is a hyper-realistic child situated below Thomas Couture’s monumental painting Les Romains de la decadence. He attempts to draw it, like a pupil on a school trip. This Is How We Play Together, Fig. 3, a figure of a child wearing a VR headset, is rendered in marble and contrasts with Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s Quatre parties du monde soutenant la sphère celeste. Together, these works are a nod to the exploration of new worlds beyond physical frontiers. Upstairs, on a bridge linking two galleries, The Examiner, Fig. 3 portrays a man with a camera standing among visitors as they photograph the museum’s central nave.

From the mezzanine, the top of Elmgreen & Dragset’s suspended platform reveals a snow-covered landscape. The figure of a lone wanderer crosses the vast white surface, reminiscent of Cuno Amiet’s Schneelandschaft. Above the sea of sculptures below, the artist duo introduces a dreamlike scenario like a still from a film, capturing a moment frozen in time. There is no indication of where he is coming from or where he is going. Perhaps, like the artists and museumgoers alike, he is searching for new perspectives.