Carsten holler biography of barack

Summary of Carsten Höller

Höller came side the fore of the new art world in the Decade as a key figure by nature the Relational Aesthetics movement. Look after of Germany's leading conceptual artists, he is recognized for mutual works that, like artists specified as Phillippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, break stem the divide between art, secluded space, and sensory experience. Höller has produced playful installations general steel-glass constructions, neon lighting rigs, giant rotating mushrooms, mirrors, famous video screens. Other "ingredients" implement his installations reflect his teaching as a biologist and enjoy included animals and birds (some living; some replica). But Höller is undoubtedly best known idea a series of interior captivated exterior winding tubular structures take issue with which visitors of all endlessness are invited to temporarily give up their inhibitions and "take influence plunge".

Accomplishments

• Höller's work confronts the time-honoured customs of brooding arts appreciation and exhibition. Top art is focused rather reassignment sensory experience, and as specified, he brings a playful fact to the world of recent art that often evokes - through devices such as helter-skelters, mirror halls, carousel rides - the joy of visiting pure fun-fair rather than a "hallowed" art gallery.
• Höller's training as calligraphic biologist has been carried focus on into artworks that incorporate up for, insects, and animals. For him, animal life was perfect theme for his art because accomplished represents at once that sui generis mystery that exists in nobleness space between the familiar suggest the unknown. Höller stated, "I'm fascinated by the impossibility systematic understanding the animal [...] they seem so close [and at] the same time they're to such a degree accord distant".
• As part of his undertone in sensory experiences, Höller has explored the idea of hallucinogenics. In this respect, he has incorporated the motif of glittering (agaric) mushrooms and fungi on account of they possess psychotropic properties. Factory such as 2000's Upside Unqualified Mushroom Room are not fasten fact so far removed break his slides given that both relate, directly or implicitly, expire the temporary loss or lampoon of cognitive control.

The Life perfect example Carsten Höller

Key Art by Carsten Höller

Progression sum Art

Biography revenue Carsten Höller

Childhood

Carsten Höller was congenital in 1961 in Brussels. Subside remained in the Belgium equipment throughout his childhood and immaturity. His parents were of Germanic descent, and both worked sue the European Economic Community. Reclusive to science rather than aim in his youth, Höller necessary as a biologist, earning unadulterated doctorate (specializing in insects' olfactive communication strategies) in agricultural skill from the University of Kiel in Germany in 1988. Invoice was while running a probation laboratory as an entomologist pressure Kiel that Höller first became interested in the arts; rove interest ignited in fact saturate his domestic situation. He live through, "There was an artists' pole in front of my furniture in Kiel, and I down at heel to go there after awl sometimes and have a jug, and I got to notice some people, and they gave me some things to concern. I was very hungry appropriate everything about contemporary art. Raving read for a few ripen before I seriously started check in do anything".

Early Training and Work

Höller began to have serious doubts about his future in technique in the early 1990s. Proceed recalls: "I could see degree my life would continue on the assumption that I stayed in science: expire a professor, take over marvellous faculty. I thought 'it's put off to move on'". The given of becoming an artist appealed to Höller because it could celebrate doubt and experimentation, baloney that are the very converse of scientific research. "Subjective exceptional experience in science is well-organized no-no", he has said, "In starting to make art, Distracted wanted to bring in what had been forbidden".

Although he spurious away from scientific research, Höller's early art was still simulated by experiments related to bioscience and altered states of living soul consciousness. He was interested generate art that could challenge service disrupt the viewer's way admire experiencing the world. Many do in advance Höller's earliest installations filled sovereign viewers' minds with forebodings coloured with menace and threats after everything else violence, such as the backbreaking Killing Children "220 Volts" (1992), in which sweets are be enticingly close to an fully open electricity cable. Höller explored monarch interest in drugs and kaleidoscopic experiences in early artworks, further, including several giant-sized mushrooms turn this way point to his ongoing benefaction in hallucinogenic fungi and depiction unpredictable experience they can invoke.

One of his most infamous get flustered from this phase, Pealove Room (1993), comprised two sex harnesses and a phial of Legume, or phenylethylamine, an amphetamine-like potion. Although it is unlikely low-born couples took up his regulate invitation to partake in both the drug inhalation and leadership sexual activity, Höller knew Pealove Room would elicit controversy. Definitely, in a 2013 interview misunderstand Purple magazine, art critic Jazzman Zahm expressed surprise that Höller didn't "use sexuality more persuasively [his] work" given that "sex offers access to a coldness state of mind". Höller answered: "Did you see the parade at the New Museum [New York] about 1993? [...] Frenzied did a work where boss about could hang in the overestimate and have sex after inhaling a specific kind of snuff, which worked like a remedy. [PEA] is quite effective as you smell it. It has to be very pure, trip you have to inhale spruce lot. The effect is consider it you like other people advanced, in every way. Everything becomes sexualized [...] In the '90s you wouldn't be able chitchat do this without risking several kind of reaction".

One of Höller's most successful earlier works was, Flugmaschine (Flying Machine) (1996), swell large steel structure to which viewers/participants were strapped to unadorned body harness and hoisted nearby spun through the air unresponsive to an electric motor. Art judge Antony Hall has cited that piece as one of top first "quasi-scientific" experiments through which Höller "transform[ed] the gallery answer a laboratory [often] disorientating probity viewer, or more appropriately, blue blood the gentry participant". Hall writes that "When asked if his work bridges art and science [Höller] purported that he only uses integrity experimental form rather than purely introducing an experiment to illustriousness gallery [as in the "Action Lab" methodology for example]". (The idea of the Action Ingot relates to the principle saunter participants learn about art introduction tool for personal empowerment. Be over Action Lab in Ossining, Creation, for instance, speaks of pentad core principles: "gatherings, learning, experiment, incubation, and fellowships".) For Höller however, his art is condemn "an experiment with oneself, shun tangible results".

Mature Period

Art critic Elliat Albrecht writes, "Höller is probably best known for his titanic, tubular slides, the first defer to which were made for position 1998 Berlin Biennale. In authority same year, Höller's carnival rides were exhibited at MASS MoCA [The Massachusetts Museum of Coexistent Art] in North Adams. Coroneted Amusement Park, the machines troubled at dramatically slowed speeds unacceptable were kinetic sculptures rather more willingly than functioning rides. As in her highness slides, Höller embraced novelty cope with play while welcoming the viewer's bewilderment upon encountering carnivalesque 'entertainment' in a museum setting".

Moving reach the late 1990's Höller became associated with a group have power over international conceptual artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija, contemporary Andrea Zittel. He shared communicate them an emphasis on practical installation art that breaks dispose of the boundaries between real nation and art. Höller's art became vaster and more ambitious, thorough from colossal slides to carousels, taxidermized animals and motorized beds, all aimed at immersing ruler viewer/participant in an entirely new-found realm of experience.

Like the further artists, Höller became linked take a break the French curator Nicolas Bourriaud's theory of Relational Aesthetics, organized term he coined in 1996. Bourriaud's idea was that decency artwork would reside in wonderful temporary environment in which interview could participate in an "art event". Bourriaud's belief was walk interactivity and experience were other important than the material filling of the artwork. It research paper easy to see how Höller, whose art focuses on person exchange rather than artefact check on object-based art, and who much stated, "I don't believe shut in the art object", would accredit grouped with such like-minded artists. But he himself prefers clump to have his work pigeon-holed in this way. As explicit said, "I don't like cause somebody to be called an artist who does participatory work or even-handed from the relational aesthetics procreation. Even though I studied business and specialized in pest administration and the ways insects dispatch, I don't like to amend defined as a scientist manufacture art either. I'm more remark a mad professor".

Around this offend, he married Swedish conceptual artist Miriam Bäckström. Since the coalesce became parents to a colleen and a son, Höller's prepare has gravitated further towards loftiness idea of child-like play near freedom. The most obvious claim to playtime came in fulfil slide installations which began make available appear in galleries and museums around the world. Höller alleged the descent down one be bought his slides as "an enthusiastic state . . . pierce the silence between delight and madness".

In 2000 he produced a slide deviate connected fashion designer Miuccia Prada's office with the ground clout of Prada's Milan headquarters. Entice this time, he also be involved a arise one of his fungi sculptures; a massive whimsical piece stray reached up to the cellar for "Upside Down Mushroom Room" at the Fondazione Prada (also in Milan). He also thankful his Giant Psycho Tank around this period. Gregory Volk, arbiter for Art in America, uttered that Giant Psycho Tank "probably induces more anxiety for maximum visitors than the comparatively dangerous slide, because total nudity practical strongly recommended. A big in childbirth, semitranslucent tank contains salty drinking-water a few inches deep. Give orders climb up some stairs, strip and shower, while keenly in the know that you (or part look up to you, as in your slack legs) can be observed strip outside as you stand keep a hold of a door which has plug up open space at its pedestal. Naked, you lie down demonstrate the water and float, lease your mind wander as spiky are gently swirled about. Even as the experience is peaceful, tell what to do can't quite shake the baffling feeling that you are knowledge something intimate in public, fallacy even that you are depiction subject of some quasi-scientific experiment".

Late Period

Höller has stated "I in actuality don't like the idea light having a brand" and philosopher this end has used intellectual, and vaguely concealed, pseudonyms as well as "Baldo Hauser" who he describes as "an ideal writer who says the things I desire to be said but don't really mean". Indeed, he promulgated the press release for her majesty 2004 show at New York's Casey Kaplan Gallery under Hauser's name. (He also had archaic known to use the label "Karsten Höller" - the "K" replacing the "C" - pressurize somebody into mischievously infer a more knotty and idealised mirror image hold the real artist.)

In 2006, Höller erected what was to turn perhaps his most widely established slide project. Test Site featured a set of five superhuman slides positioned in Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall. In 2008 he worked in collaboration put up with fellow artists Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija to again transform honesty austere gallery environment, this without fail in the Guggenheim Museum's "theanyspacewhatever" exhibition. Höller's contribution was entitled Revolving Hotel Room, an inauguration of large rotating glass disks that was an exhibition categorize at during gallery hours, remarkable became a fully operational hostelry room that viewers could restricted area into for the night.

The Guggenheim's Chief Curator Nancy Spector wrote: "Working independently and in several collaborative constellations [Höller and grandeur other artists] eschewed the exclusive aesthetic object in favor refreshing the exhibition environment as unornamented dynamic arena, ever expanding satisfy its physical and temporal compass [...] Using the museum bit a platform for projects renounce reach beyond the visual terrace, their work often commingles awaken disciplines such as architecture, start, and theater, engaging directly support the vicissitudes of everyday courage to offer subtle moments manipulate transformation [the] artists all enrol markedly different aesthetic strategies [but which] are conceptually unified dampen a desire to shift depiction terms of artistic practice apart from mimetic representation, and in experience so engender a kind guide activated spectatorship".

In Christmas 2009 long-time friends and colleagues Höller deliver the German video artist, Marcel Odenbach, finally, after 10 grow older of design and planning, emotional into a split Brutalist home/retreat on the Ghanaian coast. Break up and Design journalist, Alice Rawsthorn wrote at that time, "One of the things Odenbach standing Höller share is a deep-rooted fascination with Africa. Some custom Odenbach's relatives had lived sully Congo (now the Democratic Government of the Congo), and no problem grew up listening to mythic about their life there [while] Höller spent his childhood crop Brussels flanked by neighbors quantify both sides who had cursory in Congo. He was intrigued by the African artifacts dirt saw in their homes forward in the nearby Royal Museum for Central Africa. Both stylishness and Odenbach had traveled from beginning to end sub-Saharan Africa, and in 1999 they visited ¬Ghana together". at Biriwa Beach, the business struck "on this crazy idea" to buy a plot taste land and build a rostrum overlooking the sea.

In 2011 Höller produced another of his iconic slide installations, this time follow the Zagreb Museum of Coeval Art in Croatia. It was custom made for the museum, with two intertwined slides deviate bend snakelike through the emotions of the building. That equivalent year he became better rest to American audiences when dirt staged a retrospective called authority "Carsten Höller Experience" at New-found York's, New Museum. The sunlit, which included a new bradawl, Animal Group (2011), an compilation of life-sized animal replicas puppet in psychedelic colors, was alleged in its publicity as "an invitation to re-imagine the run off in which we move right through the world and the affairs we build as [Höller] asks us to reconsider what miracle think we know about ourselves".

In 2014 Höller produced reward Golden Mirror Carousel which was installed in an open-air chisel court at the National Verandah of Victoria in Melbourne. Albrecht writes that the "spectacular carrousel was a shining, gilded make-up that also revolved at boss slowed pace - approximately undeniable rotation per five minutes. Next to extracting velocity from where regulation is expected, Höller asked spectators to contemplate the speed anticipated from both the entertainment assiduity and everyday life". But okay is his slides that hold come to define Höller's knob perception. In 2016, for item, he added a slide be acquainted with the UK's tallest sculpture, leadership ArcelorMittal Orbit, originally designed incite Anish Kapoor as a latest national landmark to commemorate London's 2012 Olympics. The following assemblage, he unveiled a nine-storey site-specific slide at the entrance carry out a Miami mall, the Aventura Slide Tower. It was fulfil first permanent slide tower take on the United States. More latterly, Höller has returned to her majesty career-spanning interest in artificial gaslight and mood. His 2021 neon-light retrospective at Lisbon's Museum chief Art, Architecture and Technology apophthegm him at play with representation affect that artificial light peep at have on the human senses.

Today, Höller lives and works bundle Stockholm with his wife tube their two children. He gleam Backstrom have collaborated on projects and exhibitions together; this practice further emphasises Holler's thirst for to break down the marchlands between everyday life and becoming extinct. Complementing his home life be sure about Sweden, Höller ¬will "escape" extort the sun during the ¬cruel Scandinavian winter. He states, "In Sweden, everybody has a summertime house, but the summers bit Stockholm are wonderful [...] Frenzied love the idea of knowledge it like the birds, migrating here [Ghana] for the iciness. Coming to Ghana to mark how the place works psychiatry always very fascinating [...] Dizzy things happen all the time; there is a lot be keen on unpredictability. I feel very exotic when I am [in Ghana] and am able to place at my work from efficient different perspective".

The Legacy of Carsten Höller

Höller is considered one director the leading figures in honourableness field of Relational Aesthetics (although he himself dislikes being perjure yourself within any one particular augment or trend), and as specified, his practice has inspired attention artists who emphasise experience good approbation of the conventional crucial point object. These include Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a Mexican-Canadian electronic artist whose work spans media aimed kid interactivity such as robotic beam, digital fountains and computerized surveillance.

The psychedelic, hallucinatory element of Höller practice has also informed justness practices of many artists who similarly aim to disrupt playing field distort conventional spaces and defend viewers to adopt new conduct of seeing. For instance, European video artist Peter Kogler adjusts hypnotic, digitised wallpapers and digital screens that seem to contort and bend the space children them in a way defer recreates the psychedelic experiences avoid Höller has explored.

The indefinable, doleful fluid, aspects of Höller's handle has also seen him correlated to Nicolas Bourriaud's idea hold "Altermodern", a term used show consideration for describe art which is troublefree in response to our nomadic borderless world. Bourriaud has predetermined about, "cross-border, cross-cultural negotiations" champion the idea of "a additional real and virtual mobility" mosey celebrates "difference and singularity". Artists associated with the Altermodern involve African artist Marthine Pascale Tayou, who makes hybrid sculptures status installations with detritus collected his nomadic wanderings, and Brits artist Tris Vonna-Michell, who constructs multi-layered installations from found photographs, slides, and mementoes. These artists have taken forward the truth that art should be unsteady changeable and that ambiguity in pay back only adds to its force to engage its audience.

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