With SOMA, the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin presents an installation by Belgian artist Carsten Höller that appeals to all senses. Canary song fill the room as well as the smell of Reindeer. With SOMA, Carsten Höller (born 1961 in Brussels), has created his most complex and elaborate installation to date. The living protagonists of the exhibition are formed by twelve reindeer, twenty-four canaries, eight mice and two flies. For the concept of the exhibition, please visit the SOMA website.

The Belgian artist Carsten Höller is known to a wider public for his work Test Site, an art installation in the turbine hall of the Tate Modern in London that consisted of five slides, visitors could slide down. In 1997 he participated in documenta X with the work Ein Haus fur Schweine und Menschen (with Rosemarie Trockel), in 2008 he had a comprehensive solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Bregenz.

Carsten Höller: SOMA at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin. Press preview, November 3, 2010. Video by Dian Zagorchinov / Ikono.tv.

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With “theanyspacewhatever”, the Guggenheim Museum New York presents a group exhibition of individual installations for the Rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s landmark building. The show was organized by the Guggenheim Museum’s Chief Curator, Nancy Spector, in close collaboration with the artists. The exhibition brings together ten artists, whose work reaches beyond the visual arts. Theanyspacewhatever features Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Among the works are Carsten Höller’s “Revolving Hotel Room” (see also VTV’s video “Carsten Höller: Carrousel / Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria“), Angela Bulloch’s LED-installation “Firmamental Night Sky: Oculus 12″, and Liam Gillick’s Theanyspacewhatever Signage System. Philippe Parreno has installed a site-specific, illuminated marquee on the facade of the Guggenheim, Douglas Gordon is exhibiting a compilation of text pieces, and Liam Gillick intervenes in the Guggenheim’s operational systems with hanging aluminum signs.
Exhibition walk-through at the occasion of the press preview on October 23, 2008.

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Carsten Höller: Carrousel at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, presents five interrelated works of the internationally renowned German artist Carsten Höller (born 1961 in Brussels, Belgium; lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden). For Bregenz, Carsten Höller staged his most comprehensive solo exhibition in Austria to date. The show involves five works of rotating and repeating elements. On the ground floor the Kunsthaus Bregenz shows Carsten Höller’s huge carrousel “R B Ride” (2007). On the first floor, visitors experience an overwhelming light space, which creates the impression of the room itself rotating. The second floor is optically divided diagonally, one side with mirrored walls. For the third floor, Carsten Höller has constructed the “Drehendes Hotelzimmer”, a revolving hotel room. Interested visitors can book the room for one night on Fridays or Saturdays. And then there’s a view out of the hotel room created by a projection screen. In the projection’s foreground, the “Fliegende Stadt” can be seen with its rotating towers, a transparent construction based upon Russian architect Georgi Krutikow’s 1928 thesis, whose utopian vision was of a flying city, where people would live and work, returning to earth only for recreation.
PS: In October 2006 we shot down Carsten Höller’s biggest slide at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Click here to take a ride.

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> DVD available.

Carsten Höller is the seventh artist to undertake the challenge of creating an artwork to fill Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall. Test Site continues his exploration of communal human experience and consists of slides – impressive sculptures you can hurtle down. VTV correspondent Heinrich took all his courage and shot down Carsten Höllers biggest slide on October 11, 2006. More information and an interview with Höller are available on the Tate Modern web site. The Unilever Series: Carsten Höller – Test Site, Tate Modern, October 10, 2006 – April 9, 2007.

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