Carsten Höller is a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

. He lives and works in Farsta

Farsta

Farsta is a district in a borough with the same name in southern Stockholm, see Farsta . It is also a metro station on the Green line . The distance between central Stockholm and Farsta is 8 kilometers.-Sports:...

, Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, in Sweden. Today, he also shares a house in Ghana with colleague Marcel Odenbach

Marcel Odenbach

Marcel Odenbach, with Ulrike Rosenbach and Klaus vom Bruch, is one of the most well-established and internationally known German video artists. In the 1970s, they formed the producer group ATV...

.

Early life and education

Born to German parents working for the European Economic Community

European Economic Community

The European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...

, Höller grew up in Brussels. He holds a doctorate in agricultural science, specializing in the area of insects' olfactory communication strategies, from University of Kiel

University of Kiel

The University of Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the Academia Holsatorum Chiloniensis by Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and has approximately 23,000 students today...

; the title of his dissertation is "Overwintering and hymenopterous parasitism in autumn of the cereal aphid Sitobion avenae (F.) in northern FR Germany". Only during the late 1980s did he first begin making art. However, he has been working as a research entomologist until 1994.

Work

Höller came to prominence in the 1990s alongside a group of artists including Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian artist based in New York. He is known for his satirical sculptures, particularly La Nona Ora , depicting the Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite....

, Pierre Huyghe

Pierre Huyghe

Pierre Huyghe is a French artist who works in a variety of media from film and video to public interventions. He won the Hugo Boss Prize from the Guggenheim Museum in 2002.-Biography:...

, Philippe Parreno

Philippe Parreno

Philippe Parreno is an Algerian artist and filmmaker, born in Oran, and currently living in Paris, France. Parreno's work primarily revolves around the interrogation of the nature of an image, as well as the modes of its exhibition.-Life and work:...

, Rirkrit Tiravanija

Rirkrit Tiravanija

Rirkrit Tiravanija is a contemporary artist residing in New York. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element...

, and Andrea Zittel

Andrea Zittel

Andrea Zittel is an American practicing sculptor, installation artist, and Relational artist.-Early Life:Born in Escondido, California in 1965, Zittel graduated from San Pasqual High School in 1983...

 who worked across disciplines to reimagine the experience and the space of art. In his work, Höller creates situations which question familiar forms of perception and allow exhibition visitors to experiment on themselves, often inviting the public's active participation in so-called “influential environments”. In their form, Höller's works are occasionally reminiscent of scientific laboratory arrangements, allowing the viewer to become the subject of an experiment. His work since the early 1990s has encompassed buildings, vehicles, slides, toys, games, narcotics, animals, performances, lectures, 3D films, flashing lights, mirrors, eye-wear and sensory deprivation tanks.

Among Höller's well known works is a series of corkscrewing tubular metal slides made from 1998 that is an ongoing project. Not only are slides a practical means of transportation, but the act of sliding down one produces a loss of control, inducing a particular state of mind related to freedom from constraint. His most famous slides include that made for the offices of Miuccia Prada

Miuccia Prada

Miuccia Prada is an Italian fashion designer and entrepreneur. She also has a Ph.D. in Political Science.Prada was born in Milan, the youngest granddaughter of Mario Prada, founder of the company. According to: Forbes.com's The World's Richest People 2001: "She and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli,...

 in Milan (2000) and the first slides made for the Berlin Biennale

Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art

The Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art is a contemporary art institution in Berlin’s Mitte District. It is located at - Auguststrasse 69 D-10117 Berlin....

 in 1998.

Höller's artistic practice reflects the interaction between work and public in various ways, often chemically analyzing the nature of human emotions. His avid interest in duality harks back to the start of his career, when Höller designed a series of works with the Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel is a German Artist, and an important figure in the international contemporary art movement.- Life :...

, actually doubling himself up in another creator. Other examples include an exhibition in which Höller and Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian artist based in New York. He is known for his satirical sculptures, particularly La Nona Ora , depicting the Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite....

 presented a series of identical works at two different Paris galleries, removing all differences of style or ownership; and his exhibition "One Day One Day" (2003) at the Färgfabriken in Stockholm, where two works were shown opposite each other and changed every day without the public’s knowledge. His explorations often involve playful elements such as in Sliding Doors (2003), a series of electronic sliding doors with a mirrored surface through which the audience passes in a seemingly endless passage. In 2008, Höller installed The Revolving Hotel Room, a hotel room for two, as part of an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum

Guggenheim Museum

Guggenheim Museum may refer to:* The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, United States* The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy* The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain* The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas, United States...

, New York. At his 2010 show at the Hamburger Bahnhof

Hamburger Bahnhof

Hamburger Bahnhof is a former railway station in Berlin, Germany, on Invalidenstraße in the Moabit district opposite the Charité hospital. Today it serves as the Museum für Gegenwart , a contemporary art museum....

, visitors could paid 1,000 euros ($1,370) for a night on an exposed circular platform perched above 12 castrated reindeer, 24 canaries, eight mice and two flies. In Psycho Tanks (2011), visitors float weightlessly on the surface of a sensory deprivation pool, providing a strange out-of-body experience Equally encouraging visitors' participation, Pill Clock (2011) is an aperture which emits a white pill into a growing pile of the same every 15 seconds.

Mushrooms became a regular feature of Höller's work from 1994. He has since realized several works with the fly-agaric mushroom, including the Mushroom Suitcase series (2001/2002) and the Upside Down Mushroom Room (2000), which was shown in 2005 at MOCA

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...

 in Los Angeles. His fly-agaric replicas are large-scale and often spin or hang upside down from the ceiling. The artist has also created photographic works based on the fly-agaric, entitled Mushroom Print (2003) and Soma Series (2008). In a series of giant sculptures of funghi – Giant Triple Mushrooms (2010) –, half of each sculpture replicates the look of random fungi; half, a very specific species: the large red-and-white fly agaric fungus, Amanita muscaria

Amanita muscaria

Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita , is a poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita...

, occurring wild in Eurasia. A fungus with psychoactive, hallucinogenic properties, it was used, it is thought, by Siberian shamans as an intoxicant.

In 2008, Höller opened the restaurant/nightclub "The Double Club" in London in collaboration with Germano Celant

Germano Celant

Germano Celant is an Italian art historian, critic and curator, mostly renewed for being one of the founding members of the "Arte Povera" movement in 1967....

 and Fondazione Prada for a six-month period. 50% of its profits were donated to a charity that generates specialised projects to help abused women and children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

. As in The Double Club and JapanCongo, the African continent has been the subject of his Flicker Films series (2005), in which flickering images of performances by African dance groups at a concert in Kinshasa are projected.

Exhibitions

Carsten Höller had his first solo exhibition, curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen

Nicolaus Schafhausen

Nicolaus Schafhausen is a curator.Since 2006, Schafhausen is the artistic and financial director of Witte de With, Center for Contemporary art in Rotterdam, The Netherlands....

, in Cologne in 1993. That same year, he was invited to Aperto '93

Aperto '93

Aperto ’93 is the title of an exhibition of contemporary art conceived by Helena Kontova and Giancarlo Politi, and organized by Helena Kontova for the XVL edition of the Venice Biennale, directed by Achille Bonito Oliva in 1993.-Concept and realisation:...

 at the Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

. Höller's works have since been shown internationally, including solo exhibitions at Fondazione Prada, Milan (2000), the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2003), Musée d'Art Contemporain, Marseille (2004), MASS MoCA, (2006), Kunsthaus Bregenz

Kunsthaus Bregenz

The Kunsthaus Bregenz presents temporary exhibitions of international contemporary art in Bregenz, capital of the Austrian Federal State of Vorarlberg...

, Austria (2008), Hamburger Bahnhof

Hamburger Bahnhof

Hamburger Bahnhof is a former railway station in Berlin, Germany, on Invalidenstraße in the Moabit district opposite the Charité hospital. Today it serves as the Museum für Gegenwart , a contemporary art museum....

, Berlin and Museum Boijmans van Beuningen

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is the main art museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The museum began in 1847 with the collection of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans . Much of the museum's original collection was destroyed in a disastrous 1864 fire...

 (2010), Rotterdam. Höller was included in Documenta

Documenta

documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...

 X (1997), where he created Ein Haus für Schweine und Menschen with Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel is a German Artist, and an important figure in the international contemporary art movement.- Life :...

. In 2006, he conceived "Test Site

Test Site

Test Site is an art installation, that was displayed in the turbine hall of the Tate Modern in London, UK, between October 2006 and April 9, 2007. Test Site was designed by Carsten Höller, and was the seventh commission of the series of works in the turbine hall sponsored by Unilever known as "The...

" for The Unilever Series at Tate Modern

Tate Modern

Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...

, London, and represented Sweden (with his wife Miriam Bäckström) at the 51st Biennale di Venezia. In 2011, Höller curated "JapanCongo" at Le Magasin (Centre National d'Art Contemporain) in Grenoble

Grenoble

Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...

 and at Garage Center for Contemporary Culture

Garage Center for Contemporary Culture

Garage Center for Contemporary Culture is an important non-profit international arts space based in Moscow founded by Daria Zhukova, which opened in 2008. Garage is dedicated to exploring and developing contemporary culture, whilst serving as a catalyst and meeting place for the city’s emerging...

 in Moscow, a show of contemporary African and Japanese art from the private collection of Jean Pigozzi

Jean Pigozzi

Jean Pigozzi is a businessman, art collector, philanthropist and photographer. He was born in Paris as the son of Henri Pigozzi, founder of the French car maker Simca. Pigozzi studied in Paris and at Harvard University before working for the Gaumont Film Company and 20th Century Fox...

. In 2011, the New Museum mounted Höller's first New York survey exhibition..

Höller is represented by Esther Schipper, Berlin; Casey Kaplan

Casey Kaplan gallery

The Casey Kaplan gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in the heart of Chelsea in New York City.-History:Founded by Casey Kaplan in March 1995, the gallery began as a 500sq. foot, one-room space located on an upper floor of a cast iron loft building on Broadway in SoHo. It now operates in...

, New York; Gagosian Gallery

Gagosian Gallery

Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently eleven gallery spaces: three in New York; two in London; one in each of Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow.-1980s:...

, Los Angeles; and Air de Paris, Paris.

External links

• http://www.friezefoundation.org/talks/detail/its_about_time/ It's About Time, 2008 panel discussion which includes the artist (See also The Politics of Time http://www.web.mdx.ac.uk/CRMEP/STAFF/PO-politicsoftime.HTM for the source of the orientation of the talk)
• Article on Carsten Höller's 'Double Club'
• biography and list of exhibitions at artfacts.net
• Article on Carsten Höller and the "Amusement Park" installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
• Interview with Carsten Höller on 'Divided Divided' Installation at Arttube (Boijmans)