CARSTEN HÖLLER 'Isometric Slides' 2021. Photo: Tom de Peyret
26/06/2021
Luma Arles
Parc des Ateliers
35 avenue Victor Hugo
Arles, France
'Isometric Slides' 2021 by Carsten Höller is one of the artist’s two new permanent works installed at Luma Arles.
'For those who’ve never ridden a slide before, they have a specificity to them; the experience of riding any one slide is particular to that slide. When I discovered this, I started constructing slides that were almost identical, but inverse mirrors of each other, and which have remarkably different effects—they not only bring you to a different place, but the feeling each inspires is slightly different; an inkling of the possibilities they hold.
As we hurtle ever deeper into the Anthropocene, itself a concept many of our leaders have yet to fully grasp, we’ll have to challenge more and more of our assumptions. The slides I construct in my work are art objects—with them, I hope to inspire, to induce questioning, to recalibrate a person’s understanding and experience of their self. The madness of a slide, that “voluptuous panic,” is a kind of joy. It is an experience with value far beyond the confines of a museum, or a playground. It might be time, for all our sakes, to begin to explore exactly how far that might be.'
Carsten Höller, Artsy.net February 2018
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Luma Arles has just opened with its distinctive tower designed by Frank Gehry.
This summer Luma Arles invites you to visit with 12 exhibitions, 47 artists and a 10-acre landscape park.