Carsten Höller. Registro

One of the most interesting artists of the 1990s, Carsten Höller (born in 1961 in Brussels) has made an important contribution to making art accessible to the wider public through strategies of direct involvement that help to abolish the barrier between the work of art and the spectator.
The exhibition designed by Höller for the Fondazione Prada presents sculptures and installations in which the visitor has to interact with works that produce progressive changes caused by intermittent lights transmitting vibrations to the body - these are dark and labyrinthic places producing an effect similar to hallucination. The subversion of individual sensibility through the reversal of reality and the loss of the natural dimension are some of the tactics that the artist uses in order to involve the visitor. Höller's art aims to raise doubts by questioning the false certainties of contemporary lifestyles. As the artist says: "In today's world the utilitarian way of thinking is so dominant that the other forms of observing and acting have become almost impossible. I am quite disgusted by this development because it limits or even eliminates other concepts, such as unproductiveness and irrational behaviour." One of Höller's best-known works is the sculpture Valerio II executed in 1998 for the Berlin Biennale.
It consists of a gigantic slide leaning on the facade of the Kunst-Werke, which, like a futuristic means of transport, allows visitors to move from one place to another, briefly experiencing a loss of orientation.
On the occasion of this exhibition the Fondazione Prada has published a catalogue devoted to the artist and the works on display in Milan, with an introduction by Miuccia Prada and an interview by Germano Celant.
The catalogue also contains a biography and bibliography constituting the most exhaustive documentation relating to Höller's work published to date.