Background
Carsten Höller was born on December 6, 1961 in Brussels, Belgium. He was born to German parents, working for the European Economic Community, and grew up in Brussels.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
painting
Swinging Curve
Upside-Down Glasses
Revolving Hotel Room
Light Room
Giant Triple Mushrooms
Giant Psycho Tank
The Pinocchio Effect
Infrared Room
Carousel Mirror
Vitra Slide Tower
Carsten Höller
Edit ProfileEducation
Carsten Höller holds a doctorate in agricultural science, specializing in the area of insects' olfactory communication strategies, from the University of Kiel. The title of his dissertation was "Efficiency Analysis of the Parasitoids of Cereal Aphids".
Career
Only during the late 1980s Höller first began making art. However, he worked as a research entomologist until 1994.
As an artist, Höller came to prominence in the 1990s.
He applies his training as a scientist in his work as an artist. Among Höller's major installations is a series of corkscrewing tubular metal slides made from 1998 that is his ongoing project. His most famous slides include that made for the office of Miuccia Prada in Milan in 2000 and the first slides made for the Berlin Biennale in 1998.
Höller's artistic practice reflects the interaction between work and public in various ways, sometimes chemically analyzing the nature of human emotions.
He participated in numerous exhibitions, including "One Day One Day" in 2003 at Färgfabriken in Stockholm, where two works were shown opposite each other and changed every day without the public’s knowledge, and the exhibition at MOCA in Los Angeles in 2005.
Mushrooms became a regular feature of Höller's work from 1994. He has since realized several works with the fly-agaric mushroom, including the "Upside Down Mushroom Room" (2000) and the "Mushroom Suitcase series" (2001-2008).
Moreover, animals have also figured largely in Höller’s work, most prominently at his exhibition Soma at the Hamburger Bahnhof. His animal works include "Loverfinches" (1992-1994), "Aquarium" (1996), "The Belgian Problem" (2007), "Singing Canaries Mobile" (2009).
Höller is currently represented by Air de Paris, Paris; Massimo de Carlo, Milan; and Gagosian Gallery, London, New York, and Los Angeles. He lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Currently, he also shares a house in Ghana with colleague Marcel Odenbach.
Achievements
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Carsten Höller is best known for his major installations "Test site" (2006), a series of giant slides for tate modern’s turbine hall. Besides, he is represented by internationally recognized galleries, including Air de Paris, Paris; Massimo de Carlo, Milan; and Gagosian Gallery, London, New York, and Los Angeles.
Works
painting
Views
Carsten Höller's primary concerns relate to the nature of human perception and self-exploration. In his work Höller aims to disorient and by doing so, stimulate precognitive moments of pure sensation.
Quotations:
"A slide is a sculptural work with a pragmatic aspect."
"The slide is an object that we associate with playgrounds, amusement parks and emergency exits. I’d like to extend the use of the slide: I don’t see any reason why slides should only be used by children and in the case of an emergency.'
"I see one function of the museum as being a space for experimentation and for testing ideas and concepts that could eventually be realised on a larger scale outside the museum."
Connections
- colleague:
- Marcel Odenbach
Carsten Höller shares a house in Ghana with colleague Marcel Odenbach.
