Elmgreen & Dragset have turned Galerie Max Hetzler's two Paris venues into a small theatre of the absurd. Their exhibition Les Fous d'En Face, which translates as The Fools on the Other Side, opened on 19 October 2026 across the gallery's spaces at 46 and 57 rue du Temple and runs until 16 December. It is the duo's second solo presentation with the gallery and their first in its Paris home, staged to coincide with Art Basel Paris.

The show is built from three new installations, each working a different sculptural register. In the first, a lifelike young boxer in red gloves slumps against the ropes of a full-size ring, lit by a single round spotlight like an actor alone on stage. No opponent is anywhere in sight. The figure portrays Michael Elmgreen as a young man, giving the scene an autobiographical sting: the contest, if there ever was one, is already over, and the viewer is left with the fatigue that follows.

Elsewhere, the mood swings from pathos to slapstick. An oversized steel clown nose is paired with the sound of recorded applause, applause for a performance that never arrives. A third work straps a monumental figure to the roof of an old Fiat 500, a deadpan image of travel, ambition and exposure that refuses to explain itself.

Across both venues, the installations keep returning to the same preoccupations that have long defined the pair: jokes that curdle into unease, familiar objects knocked out of place, and stories left deliberately unfinished. Personal memory runs through the work too, with scenes drawn from the artists' own pasts giving the absurdity a private undertow.