Installation
Carsten Höller
The Double Club Los Angeles
March 7–10, 2024
Luna Luna, Los Angeles
lunaluna.com
Carsten Höller’s The Double Club Los Angeles transforms a vast warehouse in the heart of the Los Angeles Arts District, used by the Luna Luna team to unpack and reconstruct the rides on display in its restaging of the art amusement park, into a fanciful landscape. Now in its third incarnation, Höller’s installation begins with a single floor area and applies the mathematical rule of division by halving the footprint, while doubling it in height, to create nine unique spaces that deconstruct the carnival experience. The four-day event is presented by Prada Mode, in partnership with Luna Luna, and includes musical programming curated by the rapper Drake, who played a major role in bringing Luna Luna to LA, and Höller, who visited the park during its 1987 debut in Hamburg, Germany. The event is free and open to the public on March 9–10 with admission to Luna Luna.
Carsten Höller’s The Double Club Los Angeles, Luna Luna, Los Angeles, March 7–10, 2024. Artwork © Carsten Höller
Visit
Noor Riyadh Festival 2023
The Bright Side of the Desert Moon
November 30–December 16, 2023
Various locations in Riyadh
riyadhart.sa
The third annual Noor Riyadh, a citywide festival of public art installations, will showcase expansive light-based artworks by more than one hundred artists across five pivotal city hubs. Titled The Bright Side of the Desert Moon, the selection features ephemeral sculptures, urban projections, and immersive site-specific installations, including neon works by Douglas Gordon and Carsten Höller.
Carsten Höller, Decimal Clock (Blue and Orange), 2023 © Carsten Höller. Photo: Thomas Lannes
Public Installation
Carsten Höller
Abu Dhabi Dots
November 18, 2023–January 30, 2024, 5:30pm–1am daily
Corniche, Abu Dhabi
abudhabiculture.ae
Carsten Höller’s Abu Dhabi Dots (2023) is installed on the waterfront in Abu Dhabi as part of the inaugural edition of Manar Abu Dhabi, a festival offering an immersive, multisensory experience to celebrate the natural beauty of the United Arab Emirates. The second installment of the artist’s Dots series, the public light exhibit, which begins each evening at 5:30pm, comprises twenty spotlights in four colors that follow participants’ movements and allow them to play a “reward and punishment” game with one another.
Carsten Höller, Abu Dhabi Dots, 2023 © Carsten Höller. Photo: Colin Robertson
Installation
Carsten Höller
Light Wall (Outdoor Version)
March 18–April 3, 2021
Carsten Höller’s Light Wall has been installed in Riyadh as part of Noor Riyadh, a new annual citywide festival of public art installations. The theme for 2021 is Under One Sky, which alludes to the universal human impulse to gather around light, to look into the flames of a campfire, and to gaze at the stars. While the theme in its English translation is instantly relatable to an international audience, the words in Arabic literally mean “we gather under one sky”—an idea of togetherness that becomes particularly resonant in light of the global pandemic.
Carsten Höller’s Light Wall (Outdoor Version), 2021, installation view, King Abdulaziz Historical Center, Riyadh © Carsten Höller. Photo: © Riyadh Art
Exhibition
Broadcast
Alternate Meanings in Film and Video
You’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
—Timothy Leary
Gagosian is pleased to present Broadcast: Alternate Meanings in Film and Video, an online exhibition of artists’ films and videos viewable exclusively on gagosian.com. The exhibition will be organized into a series of “chapters,” each lasting two weeks. The first chapter begins on Tuesday, May 19, 2020.
Broadcast: Alternate Meanings in Film and Video employs the innate immediacy of time-based art to spark reflection on the here and now, taking the words of famed psychologist and countercultural icon Timothy Leary as its starting point.
Adam McEwen, Escape from New York, 2014 (still from “Battery Tunnel”) © Adam McEwen
Screening
Carsten Höller
Fara Fara
Monday, December 30, 2019
Palm Beach, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
Realized together with the Swedish film director Måns Månsson, Carsten Höller’s film Fara Fara (2014) documents the music scene in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Congolese tradition, the fara fara, which means “face-to-face” in Lingala, is a musical competition in which two musicians perform concurrently on different stages, playing for as long as they possibly can. The musician who is able to engage their audience the longest wins. The film examines the individual psychology of the people who spearhead Kinshasa’s music scene, offering insightful observations on the context, history, and political impact of this specific subculture.
Carsten Höller, Fara Fara, 2014 (still) © Carsten Höller
Exhibition
The Extreme Present
Opening reception: Tuesday, December 3, 5–8pm
December 4–8, 2019
Moore Building, Miami
Gagosian is pleased to announce The Extreme Present, the fifth in a series of annual exhibitions at the Moore Building in the Miami Design District during Art Basel Miami Beach, presented by Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch. The Extreme Present will explore artists’ reactions to the conditions of our accelerating and increasingly complex world. The title is inspired by The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, a book by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, published in 2015. Their provocative thesis addresses the rapidly evolving digital era, half a century after Marshall McLuhan’s groundbreaking study on technology’s influence on culture, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, in which he coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” Works in this exhibition explore concepts of media, communication, togetherness, and isolation.
Download the full press release (PDF)
The Extreme Present
Design
Carsten Höller
May 26, 2018–January 1, 2019
Museum of Modern Art, New York
www.moma.org
Carsten Höller, who has a history of working with Congolese artists, is collaborating in the exhibition design for Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Bodys Isek Kingelez, who died in 2015 and was based in what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), made sculptures of imagined buildings and cities that reflected his dreams for his country, his continent, and the world.
Bodys Isek Kingelez, Kimbembele Ihunga, 1994, CAAC – The Pigozzi Collection, Geneva © Bodys Isek Kingelez
In Conversation
Carsten Höller
Stefano Mancuso
Thursday, April 19, 2018, 6:30–7:30pm
Cinema Odeon, Florence
www.palazzostrozzi.org
On the occasion of the unveiling at Palazzo Strozzi, Carsten Höller and Italian plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso will speak about their site-specific project The Florence Experiment. Arturo Galansino, director of the Palazzo Strozzi, will introduce the pair. The event is free and open to the public. Space is limited and will be granted on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Carsten Höller, 2016. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe
Talk Series
Who’s Afraid of the New Now? 40 Artists in Dialogue
Saturday–Sunday, December 2–3, 2017
New Museum, New York
www.newmuseum.org
To celebrate its fortieth anniversary, the New Museum will host a talk series with over forty artists whose work has been integral in shaping the New Museum. Highlight includes:
December 2, 1pm
Carsten Höller and Hans Haacke
Purchase tickets at www.newmuseum.org
December 2, 4pm
Jeff Koons and George Condo
Purchase tickets at www.newmuseum.org
December 3, 3pm
Neil Jenney and Nicole Eisenman
Purchase tickets at www.newmuseum.org
Allen Ruppersberg, Who’s Afraid of the New Now?, from the series Preview Suite (1988). Photo courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
Visit
Nocturne Rive Droite
Wednesday, May 17, 2017, 6–11pm
4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris
www.art-rivedroite.com
Galleries located in the triangle d’or will be open to visitors after hours. A group exhibition including work by John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Edmund de Waal, Carsten Höller, Olivier Mosset, Steven Parrino, Sterling Ruby, Richard Serra, Taryn Simon, and Tatiana Trouvé will be on view at our Paris gallery.
Photo: Zarko Vijatovic