ART CITIES:N.York-Carsten Höller
Originally trained as a scientist, Carsten Höller is frequently inspired by research and experiments from scientific history and deploys these studies in works that alter the audience’s physical and psychological sensations, inspiring doubt and uncertainty about the world around them. His work often draws on social spaces but the experiences they provide are always far from our usual expectations of these activities.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Gallery Archive
Carsten Höller presents recent work in his solo exhibition “Reason” at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. Towering mushroom collages, a maze of mirrored panels, abstract paintings, hyperreal little fishes, an environment for children in the form of a huge dice: Höller unites art, play, and phenomenology to transform the gallery into a laboratory of reason and the incomprehensible. With a professional formation in the natural sciences, Höller has long been fascinated by the unique attributes and behaviors of people, fungi, and animals. “The Giant Triple Mushroom” (2015) sculptures combine enlarged cross-sections of three different species, fungal hybrids that seem at once empirical and surreal. Fly agaric mushrooms always make up at least half of these sculptures; like many of Höller’s topics, they are both formally and conceptually captivating, incarnations of “Irrationality with a method”. When ingested, they can induce hallucinogenic effects, as seen in “Muscimol” (1996), an early video of the artist under the influence. “Flying Mushrooms” (2015) is a giant stabile with moving parts, which turns when its lowest arm is pushed, causing a crop of seven fly agaric replicas to orbit slowly through the air, living up to their name. Each mushroom is cut vertically down the middle, then reassembled so that one half is upright and the other upended, the distinctive white-spotted red caps spinning like propellers at either end of their stems. Höller searches for reason only to escape or disprove it. He allows experience to surpass meaning, and provides a model for infinity through radical simplicity. While his Divisions paintings, animal works, and neon objects embody this model, “Revolving Doors” (2004-16) repeats the mirrored image endlessly, creating a mise-en-abîme that engulfs those who enter it in a multitude of ever-changing reflections.
Info: Gagosian Gallery, 555 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 20/6-11/8/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.gagosian.com
