Carsten Höller

Carsten Höller is an artist known for his immersive and interactive artworks that often blur the line between art and science.

Biography of Carsten Höller

Carsten Höller (b. 1961, Brussels) is a German-Belgian artist who currently resides and works in Stockholm, Sweden.

Höller spent his formative years in Belgium and eventually pursued an academic path in the sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Kiel in Germany in 1988. This scientific background would later influence his artistic endeavors.

Until the late 1980s, he embarked on his journey as an artist. Prior to that, he had dedicated his time to working as a research entomologist until 1994.

Höller's rise to prominence occurred during the 1990s, in the company of fellow artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Andrea Zittel.

Since the early 1990s, Höller has explored a wide range of mediums, including buildings, vehicles, slides, toys, games, substances, animals, live performances, lectures, 3D films, lighting, mirrors, eyewear, and sensory deprivation tanks.

Starting in 1994, mushrooms have played a consistent role in Höller's artistic repertoire. Since then, he has created numerous works featuring the fly-agaric mushroom, including the Mushroom Suitcase series (2001/2008) and the inventive Upside Down Mushroom Room (2000). Notable among his projects are the colossal fungi sculptures—the Giant Triple Mushrooms (2010).

Over the past two decades, Höller's artistic creations have gained international recognition, with exhibitions at prestigious venues. Notable among these are his solo showcases at esteemed institutions such as Fondazione Prada in Milan (2000), Musée d'Art Contemporain in Marseille (2004), MASS MoCA (2006), and Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria (2008).

Höller's artistic presentations have been featured on a diverse array of platforms and at various biennales, including the Venice Biennale (2015, 2009, 2005, and 2003), Gwangju Biennale (2014, 2010), Berlin Biennale (2014), Sharjah Biennial (2013), Bienal de São Paulo (2008), and Biennale de Lyon (2003).

Carsten Höller's Art Style

Carsten Höller artistic practice is characterized by a myriad of daring experiments.

During the 1998 Berlin Biennale, Höller embarked on a transformative endeavor that would come to define his artistic repertoire—a series of colossal tubular slides that fundamentally altered the way users perceived and navigated the structures they traversed. In 2000, he introduced a slide within the Milan workspace of designer Miuccia Prada. In 2006, he conceived Test Site, a collection of five slides ingeniously crafted within Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in London.

In 2008, Höller introduced an intriguing creation called "The Revolving Hotel Room," a two-person accommodation, as part of an exhibition hosted at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

One of the main themes in Carsten Höller's art is animals. In his exhibition titled "Soma," hosted at the Hamburger Bahnhof, a striking display featured two distinct groups of reindeer in the expansive main exhibition space. Accompanying them was a diverse assembly of canaries, mice, and flies. Höller's exploration of animals extends further, notably in the creation of the "House for Pigs and People," a collaborative construction between Höller and Rosemarie Trockel.

Additional instances of Höller's exploration involving animals encompass a range of intriguing projects. These include Loverfinches (1992-1994), Aquarium (1996), The Belgian Problem (2007), The Singing Canaries Mobile (2009), and collaborative efforts with Rosemarie Trockel, such as Mosquito Bus (1996), Addina (1997), Bee House (1999), Silverfish House (1999), and the captivating Eyeball: a House for Pigeons, People, and Rats (2000).