Carsten holler biography channel

Circle Division Canary Mobile Black Outside, White Inside , detail, , circular mobile structure with 2 powder-coated caged and 2 canaries, Total diameter cm each cage diameter 90 cm. Twins - series , , monitors, media players, cables, synchroniser, loudspeakers, sound, digital video file black and white , dimensions variable. Photo Thomas Bruns.

His works have included slides, carousels, animals, revolving doors and giant mushrooms, frequently inviting active participation. Join our mailing list to be a part of our community. Sign up. Sign up to our mailing list for events, programme updates, opportunities and more. And in that way this third form arises, which is an illusion and which moves, while the two other forms, by contrast, are fixed.

A second edition of Double Club took place at Miami Art Basel this year where the artist exposes his on going concept on duality and oppositions in the shape of two installations where one side is monochromatic and other, full of neon colours. The exhibition Soma was installed at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in Its main element were 12 reindeer in two pens running the length of the former railway station.

Half of the reindeer were fed the fly agaric mushrooms in their food, which are part of their customary diet in the wild, and turn their urine into a hallucinogen. The reindeer urine was collected by handlers and then stored in on-site refrigerators for use. The experiment was extended to canaries, which were housed in two hanging cage pieces, to mice, and to flies.

A mushroom-shaped Elevator Bed was installed in the middle of the space, and visitors could spend the night on the premise for a fee. The title Soma comes from the name of the sacred libation drunk by the Indo-European followers of the Vedic religion , Hinduism's 5,year-old parent. Its ancient text, the Rigveda , contains hymns to "creative juice", supposed to offer immortality.

The recipe was lost, but in the s researcher Gordon Wasson hypothesized that soma was based on the fly agaric mushroom. Some consist of such things as a comforter containing a piece of dried fly agaric titled Sucette aux Fausses Oranges , a trap made from an upside-down playpen baited with a Kinder Schokolade egg attached to fishing wire titled Komm Kleines, kriegst was Feines , a bicycle for children rigged with a fuse, match, and petrol titled Bicycle Bomb , a piece titled Volt consisting of plugs, connecting cable and candy.

Three Venomous Frogs from Costa Rica in a Bottle is a piece that is just that: dangerous frogs submerged in water in a baby's bottle. The works in this series have been usually installed on bright bubble-gum pink carpet.

Carsten holler biography channel

A local fairground operator, Art Gillette, engineered the changes. The year of manufacture is , the year of the failed revolution. He goes further to say that "the carrousel resembles a huge clock—that is, a time-measuring device rather than a time-diverting machine…" [ 39 ]. The pair of carousels anthropomorphically suggests a couple, "I thought it would be nice to have two [merry-go-rounds] interacting as if they were in love or something.

To bring people together and then further away It is romantic and tragic at the same time. Each panel holds a grid of light bulbs flickering at a frequency of between seven and twelve hertz, combined with a clicking stereo signal that continues back and forth between two audio speakers. This induces optic and acoustic hallucinations : viewers experience modulating fields of color with their eyes open or shut, or perceive themselves or what is said by others around them in altered ways.

Lichtraum , as installed at Kunsthaus Bregenz , consisted of four walls of the exhibition space, each covered by thousands of LED lights. Two monumental slides invited visitors to travel from the building's upper loggia to the courtyard below. In contrast with his earlier slide installations, which focussed on the individual's perceptual experiences, this artwork opened the field wider, looking at how plants might also be affected by being subjected to the exhilarating slide.

They shared their ideas in this installation with the goal of conducting an experiment on the differences and similarities between intelligent human and plant life. Once a week, visitors were invited to travel down the slides holding a bean plant which was then handed to a team of scientists who had installed a temporary laboratory on the courtyard level.

The scientists analysed the bean plants, comparing them with those that had not been subjected to the slide experience, to see what if any changes had occurred. Mancuso says, "we can ask ourselves whether man, with his special intelligence and his large brain that allows him to develop theories and to compose symphonies, sonnets and so on, is more or less 'fit' to survive than other species".

Divisions Wall was made from neon tubes that follow the museum's architectural structure, gradually moving closer together as viewers follow its curving walls. But this was the first time all his light works had been seen together in one exhibition. In fact, the gallery was entirely lit by Holler's art, meaning walking through the installations became a journey through various light and dark scenarios that disorientated the human senses.

He remained in the Belgium capital throughout his childhood and adolescence. His parents were of German descent, and both worked for the European Economic Community. He recalled, "There was an artists' bar in front of my apartment in Kiel, and I used to go there after work sometimes and have a beer, and I got to know some people, and they gave me some things to read.

I was very hungry for everything about contemporary art. I read for a few years before I seriously started to do anything". He recalls: "I could see how my life would continue if I stayed in science: become a professor, take over a faculty. I thought 'it's time to move on'". He was interested in art that could challenge and disrupt the viewer's way of experiencing the world.

One of his most infamous pieces from this phase, Pealove Room , comprised two sex harnesses and a phial of PEA, or phenylethylamine, an amphetamine-like chemical. It has to be very pure, and you have to inhale a lot. The effect is that you like other people more, in every way. Everything becomes sexualized [ The idea of the Action Lab relates to the principle that participants learn about art as tool for personal empowerment.

An Action Lab in Ossining, NY, for instance, speaks of five core principles: "gatherings, learning, experimentation, incubation, and fellowships". Titled Amusement Park , the machines moved at dramatically slowed speeds and were kinetic sculptures rather than functioning rides. He shared with them an emphasis on experiential installation art that breaks down the boundaries between real life and art.

Bourriaud's idea was that the artwork would reside in a temporary environment in which viewers could participate in an "art event". Bourriaud's belief was that interactivity and experience were more important than the material content of the artwork. But he himself prefers not to have his work pigeon-holed in this way. As he said, "I don't like to be called an artist who does participatory work or is from the relational aesthetics generation.

Even though I studied agriculture and specialized in pest control and the ways insects communicate, I don't like to be defined as a scientist making art either. I'm more of a mad professor". The most obvious concession to playtime came in his slide installations which began to appear in galleries and museums around the world. In he produced a slide that connected fashion designer Miuccia Prada's office with the ground floor of Prada's Milan headquarters.

At this time, he also produced one of his fungi sculptures; a massive whimsical piece that reached up to the ceiling for "Upside Down Mushroom Room" at the Fondazione Prada also in Milan. He also made his Giant Psycho Tank during this period. Gregory Volk, critic for Art in America , said that Giant Psycho Tank "probably induces more anxiety for most visitors than the comparatively risky slide, because total nudity is strongly recommended.

A big enclosed, semitranslucent tank contains salty water a few inches deep. You climb up some stairs, disrobe and shower, while keenly aware that you or part of you, as in your lower legs can be observed from outside as you stand behind a door which has an open space at its bottom. Naked, you lie down in the water and float, letting your mind wander as you are gently swirled about.

While the experience is peaceful, you can't quite shake the unnerving feeling that you are doing something intimate in public, or even that you are the subject of some quasi-scientific experiment". He was intrigued by the African artifacts he saw in their homes and in the nearby Royal Museum for Central Africa. Staying at Biriwa Beach, the friends struck "on this crazy idea" to buy a plot of land and build a house overlooking the sea.

It was custom made for the museum, with two intertwined slides that bend snakelike through the interior of the building.