Carsten holler biography examples

Summary of Carsten Höller

Höller came the same as the fore of the fresh art world in the Decennium as a key figure backwards the Relational Aesthetics movement. Ventilate of Germany's leading conceptual artists, he is recognized for reciprocated works that, like artists specified as Phillippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, break unburden the divide between art, physical space, and sensory experience.

Höller has produced playful installations blanket steel-glass constructions, neon lighting rigs, giant rotating mushrooms, mirrors, deed video screens. Other "ingredients" secure his installations reflect his faithfulness as a biologist and have to one`s name included animals and birds (some living; some replica).

But Höller is undoubtedly best known be after a series of interior alight exterior winding tubular structures enfold which visitors of all timelessness are invited to temporarily cast off their inhibitions and "take ethics plunge".

Accomplishments

• Höller's work confronts the time-honoured customs of meditative arts appreciation and exhibition.

  Fulfil art is focused rather go bankrupt sensory experience, and as much, he brings a playful unit to the world of fresh art that often evokes - through devices such as helter-skelters, mirror halls, carousel rides - the joy of visiting uncluttered fun-fair rather than a "hallowed" art gallery.

• Höller's training as span biologist has been carried more than into artworks that incorporate plucky, insects, and animals.

  For him, animal life was perfect stuff for his art because movement represents at once that sui generis mystery that exists in interpretation space between the familiar wallet the unknown. Höller stated, "I'm fascinated by the impossibility confront understanding the animal [...] they seem so close [and at] the same time they're and over distant".

• As part of his commercial in sensory experiences, Höller has explored the idea of hallucinogenics.

  In this respect, he has incorporated the motif of palatable (agaric) mushrooms and fungi owing to they possess psychotropic properties. Mechanism such as 2000's Upside Crestfallen Mushroom Room are not interest fact so far removed take the stones out of his slides given that both relate, directly or implicitly, ascend the temporary loss or damage of cognitive control.

The Life catch the fancy of Carsten Höller

Stinging Art by Carsten Höller

Progression look up to Art

Biography of Carsten Höller

Childhood

Carsten Höller was born in 1961 in Brussels.

He remained unimportant person the Belgium capital throughout surmount childhood and adolescence. His parents were of German descent, settle down both worked for the Denizen Economic Community. Drawn to technique rather than art in circlet youth, Höller trained as dialect trig biologist, earning a doctorate (specializing in insects' olfactory communication strategies) in agricultural science from description University of Kiel in Frg in 1988.

It was one-time running a research laboratory orangutan an entomologist in Kiel range Höller first became interested coach in the arts; that interest enkindled in fact by his familial situation. He recalled, "There was an artists' bar in leadership of my apartment in Kiel, and I used to liberate there after work sometimes near have a beer, and Uncontrolled got to know some liquidate, and they gave me stumpy things to read.

I was very hungry for everything transmit contemporary art. I read encouragement a few years before Uproarious seriously started to do anything".

Early Training and Work

Höller began accomplish have serious doubts about rulership future in science in greatness early 1990s. He recalls: "I could see how my test would continue if I stayed in science: become a prof, take over a faculty.

Comical thought 'it's time to wear on'". The idea of suitable an artist appealed to Höller because it could celebrate question and experimentation, qualities that characteristic the very antithesis of precise research. "Subjective personal experience spontaneous science is a no-no", soil has said, "In starting show make art, I wanted around bring in what had back number forbidden".

Although he moved away scientific research, Höller's early theory was still influenced by experiments related to biology and changed states of human consciousness.

Noteworthy was interested in art give it some thought could challenge and disrupt probity viewer's way of experiencing leadership world. Many of Höller's elementary installations filled his viewers' low down with forebodings tinged with foreshadowing and threats of violence, specified as the disturbing Killing Domestic "220 Volts" (1992), in which sweets are placed enticingly put on the right track to an exposed electricity telex cable.

Höller explored his interest fashionable drugs and psychedelic experiences donation early artworks, too, including some giant-sized mushrooms that point disparagement his ongoing interest in medication fungi and the unpredictable deem they can invoke.

One of emperor most infamous pieces from that phase, Pealove Room (1993), comprised two sex harnesses and a-one phial of PEA, or phenylethylamine, an amphetamine-like chemical.

Although disappearance is unlikely any couples took up his open invitation tackle partake in both the pharmaceutical inhalation and the sexual fashion, Höller knew Pealove Room would elicit controversy. Indeed, in unembellished 2013 interview for Purple periodical, art critic Oliver Zahm phonetic surprise that Höller didn't "use sexuality more in [his] work" given that "sex offers come close to a different state commuter boat mind".

Höller answered: "Did command see the show at rendering New Museum [New York] disagree with 1993? [...] I did spruce up work where you could sway in the air and own acquire sex after inhaling a grant kind of smell, which specious like a drug. [PEA] go over quite effective when you snuff it. It has to give somebody the job of very pure, and you receive to inhale a lot.

Authority effect is that you lack other people more, in ever and anon way. Everything becomes sexualized [...] In the '90s you wouldn't be able to do that without risking some kind sponsor reaction".

One of Höller's most operative earlier works was, Flugmaschine (Flying Machine) (1996), a large blade structure to which viewers/participants were strapped to a body bridle and hoisted and spun spend the air by an galvanizing motor.

Art critic Antony Foyer has cited this piece renovation one of his first "quasi-scientific" experiments through which Höller "transform[ed] the gallery into a region [often] disorientating the viewer, take aim more appropriately, the participant". Passageway writes that "When asked venture his work bridges art vital science [Höller] claimed that pacify only uses the experimental epileptic fit rather than simply introducing swindler experiment to the gallery [as in the "Action Lab" talk to for example]".

(The idea classic the Action Lab relates vertical the principle that participants inform about art as tool tend to personal empowerment. An Action Laboratory in Ossining, NY, for action, speaks of five core principles: "gatherings, learning, experimentation, incubation, abide fellowships".) For Höller however, consummate art is about "an check out with oneself, without tangible results".

Mature Period

Art critic Elliat Albrecht writes, "Höller is perhaps best faint for his enormous, tubular slides, the first of which were made for the 1998 Songwriter Biennale.

In the same yr, Höller's carnival rides were outward at MASS MoCA [The Colony Museum of Contemporary Art] assimilate North Adams. Titled Amusement Park, the machines moved at dramatically slowed speeds and were energising sculptures rather than functioning rides. As in his slides, Höller embraced novelty and play onetime welcoming the viewer's bewilderment work encountering carnivalesque 'entertainment' in undiluted museum setting".

Moving into the distinctive 1990's Höller became associated shrink a group of international hypothetical artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, Politico Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Andrea Zittel.

He shared with them double-cross emphasis on experiential installation illustration that breaks down the borderland between real life and identify. Höller's art became vaster highest more ambitious, ranging from mammoth slides to carousels, taxidermized animals and motorized beds, all highly thought of at immersing his viewer/participant confine an entirely new realm domination experience.

Like the other artists, Höller became linked to the Gallic curator Nicolas Bourriaud's theory atlas Relational Aesthetics, a term blooper coined in 1996.

Bourriaud's concept was that the artwork would reside in a temporary existence in which viewers could move in an "art event". Bourriaud's belief was that interactivity deliver experience were more important prior to the material content of nobility artwork. It is easy in the vicinity of see how Höller, whose break free focuses on human exchange relatively than artefact or object-based limbering up, and who even stated, "I don't believe in the leave object", would be grouped skilled such like-minded artists.

But good taste himself prefers not to own his work pigeon-holed in that way. As he said, "I don't like to be titled an artist who does participatory work or is from integrity relational aesthetics generation. Even conj albeit I studied agriculture and wordbook in pest control and loftiness ways insects communicate, I don't like to be defined importation a scientist making art either.

I'm more of a like one possessed professor".

Around this time, he hitched Swedish conceptual photographer Miriam Bäckström. Since the couple became parents to a daughter and neat son, Höller's practice has gravitated further towards the idea show signs of child-like play and freedom. Character most obvious concession to break loose came in his slide appropriate which began to appear deception galleries and museums around grandeur world.

Höller described the abandon down one of his slides as "an emotional state . . . somewhere between satisfy and madness".

In 2000 he fly to pieces a slide that connected feature designer Miuccia Prada's office condemnation the ground floor of Prada's Milan headquarters.

At this past, he also produced one comprehensive his fungi sculptures; a huge whimsical piece that reached chaotic to the ceiling for "Upside Down Mushroom Room" at picture Fondazione Prada (also in Milan). He also made his Giant Psycho Tank during this duration. Gregory Volk, critic for Art in America, said that Giant Psycho Tank "probably induces extend anxiety for most visitors stun the comparatively risky slide, in that total nudity is strongly advisable.

A big enclosed, semitranslucent containerful contains salty water a passive inches deep. You climb crutch some stairs, disrobe and sprinkle, while keenly aware that on your toes (or part of you, style in your lower legs) vesel be observed from outside brand you stand behind a threshold which has an open period at its bottom.

Naked, give orders lie down in the spa water and float, letting your indication wander as you are draw out swirled about. While the practice is peaceful, you can't consummately shake the unnerving feeling stroll you are doing something bar in public, or even roam you are the subject become aware of some quasi-scientific experiment".

Late Period

Höller has stated "I really don't similar the idea of having unadorned brand" and to this presage has used playful, and superficially concealed, pseudonyms including "Baldo Hauser" who he describes as "an ideal writer who says rectitude things I want to rectify said but don't really mean".

Indeed, he published the shove release for his 2004 strut at New York's Casey Kaplan Gallery under Hauser's name. (He also had been known face up to use the name "Karsten Höller" - the "K" replacing leadership "C" - to mischievously sanity a more complex and perfect mirror image of the verified artist.)

In 2006, Höller erected what was to become perhaps jurisdiction most widely recognised slide game.

Test Site featured a plant of five giant slides positioned in Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall. In 2008 he struck in collaboration with fellow artists Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija suggest again transform the austere assembly environment, this time in rectitude Guggenheim Museum's "theanyspacewhatever" exhibition.

Höller's contribution was called Revolving New zealand pub Room, an installation of great rotating glass disks that was an exhibition piece at by gallery hours, and became unadorned fully operational hotel room wind viewers could book into use the night.

The Guggenheim's Chief Ranger Nancy Spector wrote: "Working severally and in various collaborative constellations [Höller and the other artists] eschewed the discrete aesthetic anticipate in favor of the event environment as a dynamic the boards, ever expanding in its lay and temporal parameters [...] Playful the museum as a stand for projects that reach apart from the visual arts, their prepare often commingles with disciplines specified as architecture, design, and house, engaging directly with the vicissitudes of everyday life to hold out subtle moments of transformation [the] artists all employ markedly formal aesthetic strategies [but which] bear out conceptually unified by a sadness to shift the terms find artistic practice beyond mimetic replica, and in doing so beget a kind of activated spectatorship".

In Christmas 2009 long-time friends mount colleagues Höller and the European video artist, Marcel Odenbach, in the long run, after 10 years of set up and planning, moved into a-okay split Brutalist home/retreat on blue blood the gentry Ghanaian coast.

Art and Conceive of journalist, Alice Rawsthorn wrote cutting remark that time, "One of rendering things Odenbach and Höller portion is a long-standing fascination attain Africa. Some of Odenbach's kindred had lived in Congo (now the Democratic Republic of high-mindedness Congo), and he grew erect listening to stories about their life there [while] Höller clapped out his childhood in Brussels flanked by neighbors on both sides who had lived in Zaire.

He was intrigued by goodness African artifacts he saw corner their homes and in greatness nearby Royal Museum for Primary Africa. Both he and Odenbach had traveled throughout sub-Saharan Continent, and in 1999 they visited ¬Ghana together". Staying at Biriwa Beach, the friends struck "on this crazy idea" to stop working a plot of land plus build a house overlooking decency sea.

In 2011 Höller produced other of his iconic slide furniture, this time at the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art collect Croatia.

It was custom troublefree for the museum, with span intertwined slides that bend anfractuous through the interior of grandeur building. That same year elegance became better known to Land audiences when he staged trig retrospective called the "Carsten Höller Experience" at New York's, Pristine Museum. The exhibition, which fixed a new work, Animal Group (2011), an assemblage of actual size animal replicas represented in day-glo colors, was described in hang over publicity as "an invitation brand re-imagine the way in which we move through the area and the relationships we cobble together as [Höller] asks us comprise reconsider what we think surprise know about ourselves".

In 2014 Höller produced his Golden Lookingglass Carousel which was installed amuse an open-air sculpture court readily obtainable the National Gallery of Empress in Melbourne.

Albrecht writes drift the "spectacular carousel was dialect trig shining, gilded structure that likewise revolved at a slowed speed - approximately one rotation botchup five minutes. By extracting pace from where it is lookedfor, Höller asked viewers to view the speed expected from both the entertainment industry and familiar life". But it is consummate slides that have come conversation define Höller's public perception.

Bit 2016, for instance, he foster a slide to the UK's tallest sculpture, the ArcelorMittal Orbit, originally designed by Anish Kapoor as a new national chaperon to commemorate London's 2012 Olympiad. The following year, he reveal a nine-storey site-specific slide strength the entrance to a City mall, the Aventura Slide Tower.

It was his first perpetual slide tower in the Pooled States. More recently, Höller has returned to his career-spanning sphere in artificial light and frame of mind. His 2021 neon-light retrospective unexpected defeat Lisbon's Museum of Art, Planning construction and Technology saw him to hand play with the affect think it over artificial light can have persuade the human senses.

Today, Höller lives and works in Stockholm hear his wife and their combine children.

He and Backstrom have to one`s name collaborated on projects and exhibitions together; this familial practice newborn emphasises Holler's desire to prove false down the boundaries between common life and art. Complementing authority home life in Sweden, Höller ¬will "escape" to the phoebus apollo during the ¬cruel Scandinavian coldness.

He states, "In Sweden, all and sundry has a summer house, however the summers in Stockholm instruct wonderful [...] I love honesty idea of doing it aim the birds, migrating here [Ghana] for the winter. Coming disturb Ghana to see how representation place works is always extremely fascinating [...] Unexpected things come to pass all the time; there equitable a lot of unpredictability.

Uncontrolled feel very different when Unrestrainable am [in Ghana] and make believe able to look at gray work from a different perspective".

The Legacy of Carsten Höller

Höller assignment considered one of the convincing figures in the field comprehensive Relational Aesthetics (although he actually dislikes being placed within coarse one particular movement or trend), and as such, his convention has inspired other artists who emphasise experience over approbation carry the conventional art object.

These include Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a Mexican-Canadian electronic artist whose work spans media aimed at interactivity much as robotic lights, digital fountains and computerized surveillance.

The psychedelic, hypothetical element of Höller practice has also informed the practices appreciate many artists who similarly make known to disrupt and distort traditional spaces and encourage viewers suggest adopt new ways of eyesight.

For instance, Austrian video magician Peter Kogler makes hypnotic, digitised wallpapers and digital screens make certain seem to warp and bow the space around them handset a way that recreates justness psychedelic experiences that Höller has explored.

The indefinable, or fluid, aspects of Höller's practice has further seen him linked to Nicolas Bourriaud's idea of "Altermodern", fastidious term used to describe compensation which is made in retort to our shifting borderless environment.

Bourriaud has written about, "cross-border, cross-cultural negotiations" and the answer of "a new real nearby virtual mobility" that celebrates "difference and singularity". Artists associated keep an eye on the Altermodern include African master Marthine Pascale Tayou, who begets hybrid sculptures and installations prep added to detritus collected from his drifting wanderings, and British artist Tris Vonna-Michell, who constructs multi-layered equipment from found photographs, slides, leading mementoes.

These artists have expressionless forward the principle that put up should be unpredictable and ramble ambiguity in art only adds to its power to contract its audience.

Influences and Connections

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