CARSTEN HOLLER | VIENNA

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary

Carsten Höller, "Aufzugbett" (Elevator Bed), 2010. Installation. Photo: Attilio Maranzano. © Carsten Höller / Bildrecht Vienna 2014. Carsten Höller: LEBEN July 10–November 23, 2014 Press conference: July 9, 12:30pm Opening: July 10, 7pm Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary–Augarten TBA21–Augarten Scherzergasse 1A 1020 Vienna, Austria Hours: Wednesday–Thursday noon–5 pm, Friday–Sunday noon–7 pm, Free admission Belvedere Prinz-Eugen-Straße 27 1030 Vienna, Austria Hours: Monday–Sunday 10am–6pm T +43 1 513 98 56 24 augarten@tba21.org www.tba21.org Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21-Augarten) in cooperation with the Belvedere, Vienna, presents LEBEN, an exhibition of the Belgian-German artist Carsten Höller.LEBEN pivots around a selection of works, drawn from TBA21's collection of contemporary art and others commissioned and conceived especially for the exhibition—that invite specific forms of interaction, induce moods and affects, and generate "oriented" behaviors. The exhibition visitors encounter an ensemble of familiar devices, tools, constructions, and objects that have the uncanny capacity to orient, model, and intercept, creating both a physical and conceptual space of experimentation.  The central element within the exhibition space—Elevator Bed (2010)—is as much a proposition as it is an installation. The bed is mounted on a hydraulic rotating platform, which raises to different heights, up to a maximum of 3.5 meters. It can be booked on a nightly basis through Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom and offers guests a unique and solitary overnight experience in the foundation's exhibition grounds in Vienna's lush Augarten Park. Before going to sleep, guests are instructed to brush their teeth with Insensatus Vol. 1 Fig. 1; a dream-inducing series of toothpastes based on an original recipe devised by Höller and the perfumer Ben Gorham. The water in High Psycho Tank, a newly devised flotation tank for two, contains a high concentration of Epsom salts. Visitors must undress and float on the water's surface to experience a sense of weightlessness and sensory equilibrium. Half Clock accompanies and structures the current exhibition—it is a newly created work that functions as both a utilitarian time display and a seemingly illogical conundrum, with its apparent ability to alternately speed up or slow down the passage of time. High above the heads of viewers, two pairs of trained bullfinches housed within a set of balanced aviaries form the Bullfinch Scale, and whistle a melody that becomes part of the soundtrack of the exhibition. The newly created film installation Fara Fara features auditions and rehearsals for a musical clash between two stars of the vibrant Congolese music scene. The work introduces themes of duality and juxtaposition. Similar themes of duplication and division are prominent throughout the exhibition but specifically in Höller's Vienna Twins. Here, two identical siblings lead a completely logical, and at the same time confusing, conversation sung in a rhythmic and repetitive structure. Outside, on the Augarten grounds, a moment of visual dissection is captured sculpturally in the Giant Multiple Mushrooms. The two oversized fungi, one mature and the other still developing, are composed of four split mushroom bodies and constitute a surreal moment of hybridity.  One of the highlights of the TBA21 collection by Höller, titled Y (2003), is installed in the spectacular Marble Hall of the Upper Belvedere. This amusement fair-like tunnel spins around the visitor like a vortex. Y-shaped, it articulates the dilemma of individual choice as a question of contingency, with which visitors can also decide, or not, to continue their parcours of the exhibition at TBA21–Augarten.  TBA21 Founded in Vienna in 2002 by Francesca von Habsburg, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) represents the fourth generation of the Thyssen family's commitment to the arts. The foundation's projects promote artistic practices that are architectural, context and site-specific, performative, and often informed by an interest in social aesthetics and environmental concerns. Since May 2012 Vienna's Augartenpark has been transformed into a revitalized center for the arts under the aegis of the foundation. TBA21–Augarten marks the inception of a four-year collaborative relationship with the Belvedere and presents artists' individual stances and artistic dialogues through works drawn from the foundation's collection. The aim of TBA21–Augarten is to fill its project space with complex and critical programming, as well as to breathe new life into the Augarten as a social and cultural meeting place.

Press Karim Crippa, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary T +43 01 513 98 56 18 / press@tba21.org Gudrun Landl, Bureau N T +49 306 273 61 04 / gudrun.landl@bureau-n.de Booking Elevator Bed Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom, Volker Klier T +43 1 90616 6102 / guestservices.vienna@sofitel.com

INVISIBLE | HAYWARD GALLERY

Yves Klein in the Void Room (Raum der Leere), Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, January 1961.*

Invisible: Art about the Unseen, 1957–2012

12 June–5 August, 2012

Hayward Gallery, Southbank CentreBelvedere Road, London SE1 8XZ

www.southbankcentre.co.uk/invisible

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ArtistsArt & Language, Robert Barry, Chris Burden, James Lee Byars, Maurizio Cattelan, Jay Chung, Ceal Floyer, Tom Friedman, Mario Garcia Torres, Jochen Gerz, Jeppe Hein, Horst Hoheisel, Carsten Höller, Tehching Hsieh, Bethan Huws, Bruno Jakob, Yves Klein, Lai Chih-Sheng, Glenn Ligon, Teresa Margolles, Gianni Motti, Claes Oldenburg, Roman Ondák, Yoko Ono, Song Dong, and Andy Warhol.

Over half a century ago in Paris, Yves Klein created the first public display of invisible art: an empty white-walled room filled with what he called ‘immaterial pictorial sensibility.’ In the years since, artists have been driven by myriad motives to make work about the invisible, the unseen, and the hidden. Going against the grain of our image-driven culture, they have bypassed the impulse to produce visible objects and have instead explored art’s other communicative possibilities. Invisible: Art about the Unseen, 1957–2012 traces key moments in this history while surveying the artistic strategies and conceptual frameworks that such works have put into play.

Beginning with Klein’s utopian plans for an ‘architecture de l’air’ and Yoko Ono‘s instructions for invisible paintings, the exhibition explores the development of a low-profile tradition that reflects the influence of figures such as Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and Robert Rauschenberg (who, with his 1953 Erased de Kooning Drawing, created a contrarian masterpiece by making an existing artwork disappear). In pioneering projects from the 1960s, Art & Language and Robert Barry made use of imperceptible materials (a volume of cooled air, a pattern of electromagnetic waves) as well as metaphysical ones (philosophical arguments, projections of thought). Their varied approaches underscore the wide spectrum of concerns that gathered under the umbrella of Conceptual Art’s ‘dematerialization’ of the art object. Yet for all their differences, such works share a common interest in drawing attention to the limits of visual perception and to the unseen structures, whether physical or ideological, that inform daily life as well as our encounters with art.

The notion that absence could be a carrier of artistic content profoundly affected ideas about monuments and memorials during this same period. Invisible includes material related to Claes Oldenburg‘s influential counter-monuments from the mid-1960s, which addressed trauma and tragedy by conjuring an absent figure or void space—an approach that years later would inform a number of significant commemorative projects dealing with the Holocaust and civil violence by artists such asHorst Hoheisel, Jochen Gerz, and Teresa Margolles.

Since the early 1970s, invisible works have continued to play a critical role in expanding the limits of contemporary art, while calling into question how such limits are maintained and function. Several invisible actions by Chris Burden opened up a new avenue of performance that involved the artist concealing his physical presence or withdrawing from public display of his work, as in Tehching Hsieh‘s 13-year performance Tehching Hsieh 1986–1999. In James Lee Byars‘s installation from roughly this same time, the visitors themselves momentarily vanish. Later ‘invisible performances’ have involved the making of evaporating texts that raise concerns around privacy (Song Dong) or non-existent movies that subvert our obsession with recording (Jay Chung).

Incorporating varied contributions by 26 different artists, Invisible ultimately reveals that there is no limit to the possible meanings of invisibility in art. Works that share a similar blankness can convey remarkably varied content. An empty room or unoccupied plinth may function as a sign of mystical sensibility, a haunting past, or a cursed presence. Invisibility can conjure the evanescent and the sublime; alternatively, it can evoke individuals and social groups who have been politically ‘disappeared’ or terminally marginalized. And almost inevitably most of these works highlight the fact that our interpretation and experience of art is often contingent on information that exists apart from an object itself.

There are also invisible artworks that evince a mischievous absurdity, that play on credulity and our willingness to suspend disbelief. Yet rather than comprising a conceptual end game or a rhetorical prank designed to flout our expectations, such works assume an important task: to keep us from forgetting that the true content of art cannot always be seen. Encouraging us to set aside our usual criteria for measuring artistic value, invisible works invite us to re-imagine how we engage with art. Above all, perhaps, this rich subgenre of art deserves our attention for its generously collaborative character. At the end of the day, these works can only ever be fully realized in our imaginations.

Exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff, Director, Hayward Gallery.

Exhibition events

Thursday, 14 June 2012, 7pmSmells like Teen Spirit
Jeppe Hein
Hayward Lecture Theatre
Jeppe Hein discusses the topic of invisibility and sensory perception, with particular emphasis on smell. Drawing on his installation Invisible Labyrinth as well as other recent work, Hein explores these themes in conversation with the scientist Robert Müller-Grünow, a scent specialist with whom the artist has previously collaborated. Together, they examine synthesizing flavours, offering the audience a unique olfactory experience.

Wednesday, 20 June 2012, 7pmLecture by Tehching Hsieh
Hayward Lecture Theatre
Tehching Hsieh revolutionized performance art in America in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Between 1978 and 1999, he made six epic works of endurance; five ‘One Year Performances;’ followed by a final work, Tehching Hsieh 1986–1999, a 13 year performance. He did not reveal the content or the purpose of this performance until New Year’s Day 2000, the day after it was over.

Exhibition tours

Thursday, 21 June, 6:30pmA tour with the exhibition’s curator and Hayward Gallery Director, Ralph Rugoff.

Thursday, 28 June, 6pmArtist Song Dong talks about his work in the exhibition, Writing Diary with Water (1995).

Friday, 29 June, 1pmA tour with artist Jochen Dehn.
A performance artist who likes magic tricks and illusions, Jochen Dehn enjoys hiding and moving  soundlessly. He is interested in becoming invisible and describes invisibility as ‘a process of blurring outlines.’

Thursday, 12 July, 6:30pmSee the exhibition in the company of Assistant Curator, Eimear Martin.

Tours take place in Hayward Gallery and last approximately 45 minutes. Free with same-day exhibition ticket.

*Image above:
Yves Klein in the Void Room (Raum der Leere), Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, January 1961.
© ADAGP, Paris and  DACS, London 2012. Image courtesy Yves Klein Archives. Photo: Charles Wilp.

www.e-flux.com/announcements

CARSTEN HOLLER | ROME THROUGH 26 FEB 2012

Carsten Höller, Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes. Image via Enel Contemporanea.

Well-known Belgian artist Carsten Höller is the recipient of the 2011 Enel Contemporanea Award. Now in its fifth year, the Enel Contemporanea is sponsored by the Italian power company Enel, also sponsor to the 54^th Venice Biennale. In an effort to explore the connections between energy, a lifeline for contemporary society, and current art production, Enel annually commissions an original work that takes on themes around power and energy. Höller, oft associated with what Nicolas Bourriaudcoined as Relational Aesthetics in the 1990s, contributed Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes, now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome (MACRO). Selected by a committee of curators from around the world, past projects have included The Butterfly House by Dutch duo Bik Van der Pol (2010), an open-air installation on Tiber Island by US artist Doug Aitken (2009), and a lunar eclipse by Canadian artist Angela Bulloch above the Arc Pacis (2007).

Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. Image via e-architect.

Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes is particularly well-suited for the MACRO, a building which can itself be somewhat disorienting. An integration of contemporary architectural design with an early 20^th century brewery, the sprawling five-story structure juts out and recedes in unexpected ways, creating beautifully unsettling vistas and terraces that look out onto the surrounding community in Rome. Navigating the galleries, which are somewhat unconventionally situated (following, for example, a diagonal axis line rather than a rectilinear format), is a bit perplexing—perhaps the ideal state of mind to come upon Höller’s merry-go-rounds.

Carsten Höller, Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes. Award winning workImage via Enel Contemporanea.

Carsten Höller, Mirror Carousel (2005). All remaining images on site for Art Observed by Nicholas Wirth.

Cited as one of the most important artists of our time in the Enel Contemporanea press statement, Höller is recognized throughout the work for his immersive and interactive environments, which push normal perceptual experience far beyond its boundaries. This is made clear in his concurrent retrospective at the New Museum,Carsten Höller: Experience, inviting viewers to become participants, moving around the galleries via a three-story slide, riding a carousel, and wearing goggles that will literally flip the world upside down.

Carsten Höller, Upside Down Goggles, worn by the New Museum show’s curator Massimiliano Gioni.

Carsten Höller, Giant Slide (2011)

Carsten Höller, Psycho Tank (1999)

Höller’s current exhibition at the New Museum, as well as Maurizio Cattelan’s retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, have brought to the fore a discussion of the current state of Relational Aesthetics. In light of these two shows, performance is making its way into the museum, and the museum itself is reconsidering the interface between the institutional space and its visitors. Many questions have begun to be posed around the socio-political potency of such work in today’s art world, with an increasing amount of attention being given to different social practices. Moreover, the rise of social media and interactivity on virtual platforms has transformed the way that we interpret and communicate our experiences. While Relational Aesthetics may not have the same social resonance it did in the 1990s, Höller’s works still offer an intense visual and spatial stimulation—or, some might say, disorientation.

New Museum installation view

- M. Hoetger

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ROME THROUGH FEBRUARY 26, 2012

www.artobserved.com