Amusement Park
Matt Levy
Life moves at a different pace in amusement parks. We visit them for the free fall of the rollercoaster, the dizzying centripetal spin of the teacups and the breathtaking heights of the ferris wheel. Amusement parks invite us into a fantastical world where we can break the rules, codes and taboos that govern everyday life: the twister grants us a temporary reprieve from gravity’s tyranny, bumper cars provide release for the road rage in all of us, and the carousel appeases those of us who never got the pony we wanted as a child. It is remarkable how even a small group of rides can create a world unto its own–one where everything seems flashier, louder, riskier and more exciting than the terrain we inhabit normally. In short, amusement parks shift perceptions and, when understood in these terms, it is only natural that they have become the subject of the art of Carsten Höller.
Since the 90s, Höller has devoted himself to unsettling the most fundamental processes of human perception. Though he also works with photography and video, the bulk of his production has been in installation art–a format that enables him to create environments that provoke sensory altering experiences for visitors. His work has long used "funhouse" strategies. Previous installations include steep, corkscrew-shaped steel slides that whisk visitors down three stories in the blink of an eye; pitch-black labyrinthine hallways that one stumbles through to gain access to the remainder of an exhibition; and a hallucinatory dreamscape of massive, spinning mushrooms hanging upside-down from the ceiling. In his installation here, Höller brings this funhouse quality of his work front and center.
In Amusement Park, Höller explores what happens when a carnival midway is turned on its head. The rides run so slowly one can hardly tell they move at all. The music and flashing lights that give an amusement park its electrifying atmosphere now play at a funereal tempo framing long stretches of utter silence. How do we feel when a space we typically associate with frenetic speed and extreme sensory stimulation is quieted, and slowed to a snail’s pace? Do we perceive our own movements differently when we can walk faster than a Gravitron spins? Can we still amuse ourselves in this Amusement Park?
These questions point to the interest in experimentation that motivates much of Höller’s work. Before pursuing a career as an artist, Höller trained extensively in the sciences, and the experimental curiosity that characterized his academic background has extended to his mature artistic practice. However, unlike the traditional scientist, Höller has no interest in obtaining concrete results. The goal of his work as an artist is to create situations in which museum visitors can explore the unknown, the unfamiliar, the dubious and the uncertain. He views this cultivation of doubt as a healthy corrective to the narrow certainty that governs our daily lives.
This interest in doubt and his scientific training are two of the most significant guiding principles in Höller’s art making. While Amusement Park might not appear to be explicitly scientific in nature, it displays a fascination with sensory perception that recurs in much of Höller’s work. He creates objects and environments that manipulate the very processes by which we understand the world around us, and in doing so, he also manipulates the way we understand ourselves. In an interview, he once said, "The object becomes an extension of the body…It is not you and the object: the object and you are you." Höller’s scientific knowledge enables him to endow his installations with an imposing character not often found in works of art. They reach out to us physically and demand that we experience things differently in their presence. When walking through Höller’s Amusement Park, pay close attention to the way you perceive movement, light and sound in this uncanny space. Do you sense your bodily movements and your voice differently than you did before you walked into the gallery? Do the rides change your conception of time or the way you see other people in the gallery? How are your memories of carnival rides warped and re-connected?
The mirrored wall at the back of the gallery is a crucial element to the work. The faceted reflection it captures gives the illusion of doubling the gallery–making what was already a vast room appear to be a nearly boundless expanse of space. As you get closer to the mirror, you might make out your individual reflection captured within this surreal landscape. Mirrors are an essential instrument in the construction of personal identity, providing us with the self-portrait we use to contextualize ourselves in the world around us. In Amusement Park, the mirror gives you a two-dimensional rendering of your body moving through a flickering world that unfolds in slow motion. It reinforces the ways in which the other components of the work alter your perceptual processes. Through the mezzanine opening in the upper half of the mirror, you might see people staring down at you from the upper mezzanine level of the rear galleries. Not only does this spatial interruption within the mirrored wall confuse the distinction between reflection and reality (which side of the mirror are those people really on?), but it also brings a voyeuristic element to an already unsettling tableau.
As you move beyond the main gallery, you enter another environment of perceptual confusion. In this instance, Höller replaces the shape-shifting, space-bending capacities of fun-house mirrors with the time-shifting capabilities of video. Three-fold Delayed Infrared Room (2006) provides three identical infrared projections, each with a slightly different delay. As a visitor enters the room, she notices her infrared image projected onto the screens, yet two of the three projections are just out of sync. This discrepancy forces a closer viewing, and things get stranger still as the images interchange, the time-shifting views ricocheting across three screens.
The circular play of reflections continues in the mezzanine gallery behind the back wall, where one finds the installation Revolving Doors (2004). Like the hall of mirrors–the amusement park staple in which one moves through a room of endlessly doubled and distorted reflections–this work erodes the line between what is real and what is not. However, Höller ups the ante on the traditional hall of mirrors by setting his reflections in motion. Now, in addition to puzzling out the distinction between the real and the reflected, you have to figure out if these images are coming or going–or if you’re coming or going–or if you’re really going anywhere at all.
Together these installations demonstrate that the biological and sensory processes we rely on to understand our experiences are not as stable as we would like to believe. If the carnival midway is a place we visit to subject our bodies to the disorienting effects of speed, gravitational forces, and excess stimulation, Holler’s Amusement Park subjects our mind to a parallel set of issues, by eliminating speed and elongating intervals of light and sound. You might well leave these galleries a bit more perplexed than when you entered them, your mind having been taken on a strange ride.
Major support for Amusement Park has been provided by the Nimoy Foundation, with additional support from Sheffield Plastics, The Maxine & Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art, The Ida & William Rosenthal Foundation, Gil & Lila Silverman, Plaskolite and Holly Angell Hardman.
