Carsten Höller: Experience, Art Exhibition at New Museum in New York City Gives Visitors a True Participatory Experience

The New Museum in New York City is hosting a new interactive exhibition titled Carsten Höller: Experience featuring participatory art sculptures from German artist Carsten Höller. The exhibition “will include work produced over the past eighteen years in an immersive, interactive installation choreographed in collaboration with the artist.” Pieces include his Mirror Carousel, Umkehrbrille Upside Down Goggles, Psycho Tank (a sensory deprivation pool) and a giant slide that travels through the interior of the building.

The exhibit opened October 26, 2011 and will run through January 15, 2012. A living wiki of the “thoughts & visuals” of visitors has been created by New Museum.

Over the past twenty years, Höller has created a world that is equal parts laboratory and test site, exploring such themes as childhood, safety, love, the future, and doubt. Höller left his early career as a scientist in 1993 to devote himself exclusively to art making, and his work is often reminiscent of research experiments. His pieces are designed to explore the limits of human sensorial perception and logic through carefully controlled participatory experiences…

Functioning as an alternative transportation system within the Museum, one of Höller’s signature slide installations will run from the fourth floor to the second, perforating ceilings and floors, to shuttle viewers through the exhibition as a giant 102-foot-long pneumatic mailing system. The exhibition features a new light installation; disorienting architectural environments; a spectacular mirrored carousel; and a sensory deprivation pool, among others.

Check out Gothamist’s gallery of wonderful photos from Carsten Höller: Experience exhibit.

photos by Noah Kalina, Katie Sokoler/Gothamist