Carsten Höller: Videoretrospective with Two Lightmachines

“Carsten Höller. Videoretrospective with Two Lightmachines” at Mu.ZEE is the first major retrospective of the artist’s audiovisual work. He has been making experimental, and often monumental, installations since the early 1990s. In 1993, he ended his career as an agricultural entomologist to become an artist, but continued his interest in the behaviour of insects and other organisms. His audiovisual work therefore often focuses on scientific and sociological experiments with animals and people. Experiments involving, for example, birds, monkeys, children and friends, and tests with psychoactive ingredients, provide the subject for several of his videos. During the last fifteen years, he developed a strong interest in Congolese music culture, which made him direct ‘Fara Fara’ (with Måns Månsson), a film projected on two screens about a musical battle in Kinshasa.

In addition to videos and films, at Mu.ZEE two other, more sculptural works are exhibited that produce illusions of a moving images. Both are characterized by lights going on and off, eliciting colour-field visions and the sensation of being in an elevator.