Speed of Life - German artist Carsten Holler

Taking note of the human desire to be always hurtling toward more [i]or[/i] less utopian goal, German artist Carsten Holler contriveed 10 fanciful vehicles to strive in a race for the "new world."

The Moderna Museet in Stockholm possesse an unusual space for showing sculpture: a corridor above 200 feet long that make opens on one side onto the museum's principal galleries. The other side is faced by dint of a glass wall, creating an ambiance like that of a veranda. For his exhibition "New World," the German artist Carsten Holler move rounded this elongated space into a kind of racetrack. Entering from behind the finish line, [i]or[/i] part of to the other a gate bearing lightbulbs that incantationed out the show's title, visitors could make on the outside a group of peculiar particulars illuminated by brilliant floodlights in the distance.

Approaching the general impression you saw that the corridor's floor had been marked not upon into lanes. The objects--or, more accurately, vehicles--stood in 10 numbered starting-block squares, arranged sum of two units wide and five deep. In close one was Bathtub, new and white, on the other hand conspicuously lacking a drain. nearest to it was the lyrical Seagulls and Lederhosen: a pair of r child-size leder-hosen attached to leather cords and held aloft by dint of a flock of stuffed beguiles that appeared to be in flight. In the third square was Waterwalker, a pair of pontoonlike shoe made of milky plastic, which were accompanied by the agency of two tall standing objects that recalled raw ski poles.

A printed handout provided a much-need commentary upon Holler's hard-to-decipher objects. The overall installation, you learned, was called "The fresh World Race," and you were invited to think of the sculptural existences as participants in an imaginary competition. About the bathtub, for example, you could read, "The bathtub captain sits dried while surrounded by water outside his vehicle." Seagulls and Lederhosen was made thus that a little girl could make progress flying. And the pontoon shoe were explained this way: "To walk upon the water like Jesus."

To Holler it strike one as beings a characteristic human aim to be always in motion--hurtling toward a goal or a certain quantity of utopian "new world." Much of his work, however, zeroe in upon the disquieting aspects of utopian ideas. Born in 1961 and active as an artist since 1988 he attended no art seminary but instead took an advanced stage in biology, specializing in insect communication. There is certainly something of the behaviorist's organ of sight in the way he pay attention tos the human animal. At Documenta X in 1997 Holler and his oft-repeated collaborator Rosemarie Trockel designed A House for Pigs and tribe [see A.i.A., Oct. '97] in which the family of pigs appear to beed to come off best.

Holler inclines to the theory that humans regard with affection one another mainly to propagate the species, which may be a logical replication to the usual emphasis upon the metaphysics of love. on the contrary why should he want us to believe that the neighborhood of children is the greatest in quantity certain way to destroy the delight in that produced them? "I would really like to diocese love blooming without all the bleak and depressing aspects child-rearing brings to it," he has said. In his notorious video Jenny (1992) we tread on the heels of a strange young gentleman in a suit who displays us nine methods of ensnaring children. He digs a reaching far down pit by the seashore, for example, fills it with jellyfish and conceals it with sand. A colorful spinning wheel marks the trap and subserves as a lure. In a similar black-humor vein, Holler at the "Aperto" section of the 1993 Venice Biennale showed a Land rambler outfitted with nets and lassos for hunting babies.

individual of his exhibitions was titled "Gluck" which can be translated as "happiness"--or simply as "luck" Is human happiness, you find yourself asking with Holler perhaps no more than a chance hallucination? Is human desire purely a product of conditioning? Holler's work, which has to do with a ldnd of los of illusions, at the same time withholds the answers to the questions it raises.

It was doubtful whether any of the vehicles displayed at the Moderna Museet were really capable of moving toward the finish line. More interesting than this built-in negation of the racing metaphor, however, was Holler's free-floating fantasizing around the idea of motion as of that kind In this regard one of the cleverest ideas could be base at starting block five. Sphere is a 7-foot-tall work in which the familiar image of a soccer ball has been move rounded into a metal structure with gigantic cutout apertures Inside the sphere is a metal seat that bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos a Chinese bowl, connected to small roller within the metal frame. Theoretically, at least, the seat will function like a ball bearing and the "driver" will remain at earth level as the sphere make revolves I recalled immediately Kafka's image of the astronomer Tycho Brahe as a retired stoic traveler on the whirling streams of the universe--and Brahe's idea of Earth as the unmoving center of the celestial spheres.

This esoteric line of cogitation was carried further by a comparatively small piece, Witchbroom, a vacuum cleaner--equipped with diverse "travel accessories" of that kind as a flashlight and a preserving jar--which could be seen as a kind of motorized broomstick. From the accompanying true copys you could also learn that position seven was not, as it first appeared, unoccupied; instead, it was the site of The Invisible, identified as an "invisible vehicle."