Belgian artist Carsten Höller has filled the Hayward Gallery and terraces on London’s South Financial institution with interactive installations, including a pair of spiral slides .
Isomeric Slides, 2015. Photograph by David Levene
Titled Carsten Höller: Determination, the artist’s solo show occupies the two-storey Brutalist Hayward Gallery and focuses on the theme of decision-creating.
Isomeric Slides, 2015. Photograph by David Levene
Höller – who has been described as the “authentic Willy Wonka of contemporary art” – is presenting newly commissioned pieces alongside a lot of of his earlier works.
Isomeric Slides, 2015
The indoor and outdoor exhibition permits visitors to each “fly” over Waterloo Bridge and encounter the world by means of upside-down goggles.
Isomeric Slides, 2015
“Virtually every single piece in this exhibition has a fantastic, mischievous playfulness to it,” explained Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery and exhibition curator. “It is striving to give us the opportunity to have a fresh way of encountering and perceiving the phenomena we encounter in the globe all around us.”
Isomeric Slides, 2015
A pair of entrances – labelled with rotating A and B indicators – lead to two dark, confined corridors, which repeatedly turn and alter degree by way of the initial gallery room. The galvanised steel structures, created in collaboration with Delvendahl Martin Architects, resemble air ducts.
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Selection Corridors, 2015
“When you walk into the gallery you are on a journey into darkness,” mentioned Rugoff. “You are filled with uncertainty and doubt. That is a really important beginning to an exhibition that is exploring the concept of decision-creating.”
Decision Corridors, 2015. Photograph by Delvendahl Martin Architects
A terrace overlooking the active Waterloo Bridge is occupied by Two Flying Machines. The two structures allow site visitors to simulate flight as they rotate slowly in a circle wearing a harness that is connected to a rotating arm.
Two Flying Machines, 2015. Photograph by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO studio
Pairs of Upside Down Goggles are handed out when exiting onto an additional of the gallery’s terraces. The goggles, very first created in 1994, are primarily based on an experiment carried out by American scientist George Stratton in the 1890s, in which he constructed a mirrored lens that inverted his vision.
Two Flying Machines, 2015. Photograph by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO studio
At an additional stage in the exhibition, guests can put on a virtual-actuality headset and embark on a journey through a forest at evening. The dual-screen video of the forest splits the viewer’s vision in two, with each eye shown a different path.
Upside Down Goggles, 2015
Two self-navigating robotic beds occupy a single of the gallery spaces, where visitors can climb on board and wake up in a various area to the place they fell asleep. Using navigational techniques such as lasers and radio beacons, the two beds move in relation to every single other. These beds can be booked overnight for £300.
The Forests, 2002/2015
A ceiling-mounted timepiece named Pill Clock drops a red and white pill onto the gallery floor each and every 3 seconds, generating a mound in the centre of the space. A nearby water fountain encourages visitors to swallow one of the unidentified tablets.
Two Roaming Beds, 2015 and Decision Corridors, 2015. Photograph by David Levene
Site visitors can exit the exhibition by way of one particular of two 15-metre spiral slides that have been created into the gallery’s exterior wall, accessed through an opening in the building’s glass pyramid ceiling. Höller, who put in a related 22-metre framework in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2006, describes the slide as a “device for going through a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness”.
Two Roaming Beds, 2015 and Half Clock, 2014
The transparent-topped spirals allow guests to see out across the Thames as nicely as be spotted by passing pedestrians.
Two Roaming Beds, 2015
“[My favourite component of the demonstrate] is not mine, it is the experiences individuals have,” Höller mentioned. “I think about these functions or installations usable to generate very particular private experience – it could be playful, it could be scary, it could entirely disorientating – so this is what I am truly right after.”
“Also what is really crucial is that you can see other peoples experiences, looking at and doing items with what I am exhibiting,” he added.
Pill Clock, 2011/2015
Höller told Dezeen that he is yet to travel down the slide at the Hayward. “Right after the operate is done they lock [the slide] at each ends. The slide man when got caught in a slide – they locked the bottom but not the best.”
Dice, 2014
Carsten Höller: Choice opens tomorrow and runs until finally 6 September 2015.
The Hayward Gallery will shut after the present for restoration work, which will include removing the glass pyramid-shaped roof lights to fill the gallery with organic light, as the architects originally meant.
Photography by Linda Nylind, unless specified otherwise.
