Carsten Höller: experiments in perception and decision-making

Carsten Höller, Isomeric Slides, 2015 during installation of Carsten Höller_ Decision at Hayward Gallery, Courtesy the artist and LUMA Foundation. Photo David Levene

Carsten Höller, Divisions (Wall Painting with Aphids), 2015 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan. Photo © Linda Nylind

Carsten Höller, The Forests, 2002_2015 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Air de Paris. Photo © Linda Nylind

The show to see and experience in London at the moment is Carsten Höller: Decision.

Carsten Höller likes to unsettle, upset, delight and surprise. You get out of one of his shows and feel like you’ve lived through ‘something’ new and totally unexpected. The Hayward retrospective is an experiment, from the perspective of the artist but also from the one of the visitor, in perception and decision-taking: are you going to enter through the doors on the right or on the left? Will you dare to be harnessed to a flying machine? Will you ingest one of those curious little pills that are dropped from the ceiling? Or will you just watch and see what other people chose? And in the end, will you conclude that this was fun but a bit shallow or that it was thought-provoking and enlightening? Is this art or just entertainment?

The exhibition is what you would call a crowd-pleaser (although the £15.00 entrance ticket is definitely not crowd-pleasing.) Which in conservative art speak is a bit of an insult. It shouldn’t be. Because art doesn’t need more snobs and because if gigantic slides, bouncy Stonehenge and rain rooms are what it takes to get everyone to experience and discuss contemporary art, that’s good enough for me.

Carsten Höller, Decision Corridors, 2015 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist, Photo © Linda Nylind

The first decision you take is whether to access the show by the entrance on the right or the one on the left. I chose the left one and very quickly regretted it. I found myself in the darkness of a long, a very very long steel corridor. It sometimes goes up, sometimes down, it bends to the right or to the left. With each step, i was wondering whether i should keep on walking or whether i should just hurry back to where i came from and take the other entrance (which takes you to a similarly awful corridor if i understood correctly.)

Carsten Höller, Flying Mushrooms, 2015 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist, Photo © Linda Nylind

Now of course i find it funny so i’d recommend the experience to anyone because one day, i promise, you finally reach the end of the tunnel and find yourself in a room inhabited by huge hallucinogenic mushrooms. They are mounted on a mobile and you’re invited to push them around. And every single adult but me thought it was jolly good fun to push a bar and make the mushrooms turn.

Next, please!

Carsten Höller, Pill Clock, 2011-2015 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist, Photo © Linda Nylind

Right after the red and white mushrooms, you encounter a growing pile of red and white little pills. Every three seconds, a little capsule drops from the ceiling. You’re actually free to pop one with water from the nearby mini sink. There’s no information about what is inside the pills. That’s part of the experiment, of course, it’s another decision you have to take.

Carsten Höller, Upside Down Goggles, 2014 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist, Photo © Linda Nylind

People were queuing to try the Upside Down Goggles. The goggles are based on an experiment carried out by George Stratton in the 1890s. While studying the perception in vision, the psychologist wore special glasses which inverted images up and down and left and right. He found that after 4 days wearing them continuously, his brain started to compensate, and he could see the world the right way up again.

Höller’s perception-altering goggles are very disorientating. You feel a bit seasick and unsure of your steps.

Carsten Höller, Two Flying Machines, 2015 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery. Photo © Ela Bialkowska

More queuing! This time to be harnessed to one of the Two Flying Machines. You can pretend you’re Icarus flying over the Waterloo Bridge. Except that you’re just dangling from a big arm and slowly rotating while other visitors and the odd guy on the top the double deckers are pointing at you.

Carsten Höller, Dice (White Body, Black Dots), 2014 and Reflections On Her Eyes, Reflections On My Eyes, 1996_2015 © Carsten Höller. Installation view Carsten Höller_ Decision, Hayward Gallery, London, 2015

Carsten Höller, Half Mirror Room, 2008_2015 and Snake, 2014 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist. Photo © Linda Nylind

Carsten Höller, Dice (White Body, Black Dots), 2014. Installation view Carsten Höller_ Decision, Hayward Gallery, London, 2015. Courtesy the artist

The top floor of the Hayward also houses Half Mirror Room, a room with floor-to-ceiling mirrors positioned at 90-degree angles to one another, another disorienting experience. How big is this room really? Are these mirrors or is this another of Höller’s tricks to play with our perception? In the middle of the room is a super big dice. Instead of black dots, it has holes for children to crawl through.

Carsten Höller, Two Roaming Beds (Grey), 2015. © Carsten Höller. Produced with Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, and HangarBicocca, Milano. Installation view_ Carsten Höller_ Decision, Hayward Gallery, London, 2015

Carsten Höller, Two Roaming Beds (Grey), 2015 and Half Clock, 2014 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Thyssen-Bornewmisza Art Contemporary

Carsten Höller, Two Roaming Beds (Grey), 2015 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist, Photo © Linda Nylind

Meanwhile, two self-navigating robotic beds are quietly gliding around one of the gallery spaces. The beds move in relation to each other, using radio beacons and a laser. During the day, a big sign informs you that you shouldn’t touch them but if you have £300 to spare, the beds are yours to sleep in at night. I read that for that price, you also get “dream-enhancing toothpaste.”

Carsten Höller, Isomeric Slides, 2015 © Carsten Höller. Installation View Carsten Höller l Decision, Hayward Gallery, London 2015. Courtesy of the artist and LUMA Foundation Photo © Linda Nylind

Höller’s shiny Isometric Slides are a very efficient marketing ploy to lure you into the building. They are also the last episode of your journey into the exhibition. You get to climb to the top of the space with a fabric bag and then merrily slide all the way back to normal life.

The catalogue is pure Höller. It takes the form of two books wrapped in glossy white paper. Two because it forces you to decide which one to read first. One of the books contains new short stories by six writers – Naomi Alderman, Jenni Fagan, Jonathan Lethem, Deborah Levy, Helen Oyeyemi and Ali Smith – responding to the theme of decision-making. The other one focuses on the show itself with a photographic interpretation of the multiple ways of experiencing Höller’s immersive exhibition and an interview in which the artist talks to curator Ralph Rugoff about participatory art, proprioception, machines for meditation, and aphid’s non-sexual mode of reproduction. I haven’t looked at the short stories yet but i greatly enjoyed reading the interview.

Decisions is at the Hayward Gallery in London until 6 September.
If you’re in London this weekend, do check out the programme of Hayward’s performance day on Saturday 18 July, as part of their exhibition Echoes & Reverberations.

As usual, i took some pretty bad photos at the show.

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