ART CITIES: Paris-Carsten Höller

Carsten Höller applies scientific curiosity to his work as an artist, exploring human behavior, perception, and altered states of consciousness with playful, sometimes unsettling humor. Many of the projects that comprise his self-described “laboratory of doubt”—which range from twisting slides to vision-flipping goggles—incorporate disorienting, even hallucinatory experiences that prompt viewers to question how they see and understand the world around them.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive

As a part of Art Basel Paris’s public programming, Carsten Höller is presenting a new large-scale sculpture at Place Vendôme in Paris. “Giant Triple Mushroom” (2024) combines enlarged cross-sectional segments of three different wild mushroom species into a single hybrid form. Three meters (almost ten feet) in height, the work features the bright red cap of Amanita muscaria (fly agaric), the distinctive netlike “skirt” of the Phallus indusiatus (long net stinkhorn), and the ribbed gills of Tricholoma columbetta (dove-colored tricholoma). Represented at a grand scale, the complex structures and biological functions of these mushrooms are monumentalized within the public site of Place Vendôme. Höller’s use of mushrooms as subject stems from his background as a scientist; he has a doctorate in agricultural science, having conducted research in entomology before devoting himself to producing art. Frequently incorporating or depicting animals, plants, and fungi, his sculptures and environments draw from the aesthetics and concepts of scientific inquiry while also foregrounding illogic and perplexity. As an artist, Höller conducts radical experiments that invite exploration and conceptual play. Many of his projects, which include twisting slides and vision-flipping goggles, form part of a self-named “laboratory of doubt” that facilitates disorientating and even hallucinatory experiences. His objects and environments sometimes impose a temporary loss of control on participants, prompting them to question how they perceive and comprehend the world around them. Scaled up, «Giant Triple Mushroom» towers over viewers, prompting curiosity and drawing attention to a category of life that is both essential to the ecosystem and quite foreign to human experience. The sculpture resembles a scientific model or museum diorama in its anatomical accuracy, although Höller’s collage-like segmentation and conglomeration of multiple species into a single form is not found in nature. Höller has been making “Giant Triple Mushroom” sculptures since 2009, and each work in the series is unique, though some components remain constant. “Amanita muscaria” constitutes half of each sculpture, while the remaining two quarters are composed of two other mushroom species. The variety of Höller’s treatment of the subject may be seen in his related “Double Mushroom” vitrine works, sculptural montages that combine species of mushrooms in detailed representations realized by casting them at life-size scale. Each iteration depicts the fly agaric at different stages of growth—from budding to mature and worm-eaten—and this section determines the height of the entire sculpture. Whereas the other two species in “Giant Triple Mushroom” are edible, “Amanita muscaria” is toxic, and, at smaller doses, psychotropic. The artist’s interest in this particular mushroom lies in its cultural, historical, religious, and spiritual importance; its psychoactive hallucinogenic properties; and its alluring appearance. In 2010, Höller staged “Soma” at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin—an elaborate installation that included living reindeer, some of which were fed this type of mushroom, which historians have linked to soma, a ritual drink described in the Rig Veda, an ancient Indian religious text. “Giant Triple Mushroom” is in accord with Höller’s desire to explore realms that are outside the range of ordinary experience and understanding. As he explains, “My works inspired by plants and other living organisms have to do with our perception of these different forms of life. For example, mushrooms’ life is almost incomprehensible to us. Sometimes we have to surrender to doubt.”

Photo left & right: Carsten Höller, Giant Triple Mushroom, 2024, Fly agaric / Long Net Stinkhorn / Dove-coloured Tricholoma, Aluminum, stainless steel, and paint, 118 1/8 x 116 1/8 x 94 1/2 inches (300 x 295 x 240 cm), © Carsten Höller, Photo: Minko Minev, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Info: Place Vendôme, Duration: 14/10-24/11/2024, Days & Hours: Daily 24 yours