Enel Contemporanea is in favour of the MACRO's exhibition schedule in the autumn
with one of the most important artists today: Carsten Höller, the winner of the 2011
Enel Contemporanea Award.
His work Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes will be on
view and free to public from 2nd December 2011 to 26th February 2012 at the MACRO,
the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome.
Enel Contemporanea Award 2011 is the prize
promoted by Enel within its "Enel Contemporanea" programme, which calls for the annual
production of an original artwork on the theme of energy by international artists
(www.enelcontemporanea.com).
In Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes the public will
be also able to interact with two moving merry-go-rounds created by the artist. Turning
slowly and in opposite directions, the merry-go-rounds allow the public to get on
and off easily, as if they were enormous mills or grindstones, where the people,
sitting on top, come closer together and move further apart in constant rotation.
Around the merry-go-rounds, criss-crossing lines (the "Zöllner Stripes") create a
destabilizing effect, deforming spatial perception to provoke a slowed-down vision
of reality.
Born in Brussels in 1961 (to German parents), Carsten Höller graduated
in agricultural sciences with a specialization in plant pathology and a Masters'
thesis on olfactory communication between insects, uses art as a cognitive tool in
probing objective reality and perception. Disorientation is a key feature in most
of his works from the rotating mushrooms suspended from the ceiling of the Prada
Foundation in 2000 to the steel Test Site slides in Turbine Hall at London's Tate
Modern in 2006, as part of the Unilever Series, to his most recent exhibition, Soma,
at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin. Carsten Höller has
participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in such prestigious international
institutions as the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam and the Bregenz Kunsthaus.
He represented Sweden at the Venice Biennial 51st International Art Exhibition (with
Miriam Bäckström) and has participated in numerous editions of Documenta and the
São Paolo Biennial. The New Museum in New York is currently featuring his solo show
entitled Carsten Höller: Experience. He lives and works in Stockholm.
Exhibition December 2, 2011 - February 26,2012. MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art,
d’art contemporain de Rome, Via Nizza 138, Roma (Italy). Opening hours Tuesday-Sunday
11.00 am - 10.00 pm.
Enel Contemporanea 2011. Carsten Höller, Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes. MACRO,
Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma , Roma. Courtesy Enel Contemporanea. Photo credit
: Davide Monteleone / VII.
Portrait Carsten Höller. Photo credit : Davide Monteleone / VII
