Elmgreen & Dragset are a globally influential artist duo who play with and redefine the everyday objects they encounter by placing them in public spaces or new contexts. Their installations have been featured at major contemporary art events worldwide, including Venice Biennale, Berlin Biennale and Gwangju Biennale. One of their most well-known public sculptures, Prada Marfa (2005), a full-scale replica of a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texan desert, reflects the powerful influence of capitalism and fashion in today’s world. Another important work is Van Gogh’s Ear (2006), a vertical swimming pool first unveiled at Rockefeller Plaza in the heart of New York City, and, since 2019, temporarily installed in front of K11 MUSEA in Hong Kong.

Their sculpture Zero, which rises over eight metres high and consists of an oval form representing the outline of a swimming pool and a small rectangle representing a diving board, is a reductive representation of an everyday object. Originally commissioned to be displayed on the Chao Phraya riverfront in front of the East Asiatic building as part of the inaugural Bangkok Art Biennale (2018), it has found a permanent home by the pond at Parade Park, a garden area in front of Parade at One Bangkok on Rama IV Road. By reducing a mundane object to a simple, arch-like form, it challenges the conventional notion of public sculptures as either memorials to historical events or large-scale abstract art. Its shape also creates a connection with important works of similar forms, especially Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch. Zero is arguably the concluding chapter of the artist duo’s swimming pool-themed series, which includes Powerless Structures, Fig. 11, a diving board penetrating the windowpane at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and Death of a Collector, which features the figure of an art collector floating face-down in a swimming pool and was first unveiled in 2009 at the 53rd Venice Biennale.