Carsten Holler
Half Fiction
and
Diller + Scofidio
Building a Vision: Diller + Scofidio in Boston
22/01/2003 - 27/04/2003
The Institute of Contemporary Art
955 Boylston Street, Boston
Tel: 617-266-5152
www.icaboston.org
Carsten Holler, Valerio II, 1998 (detail)
The
Institute of Contemporary Art Opens Two New Exhibitions on January 22,
2003
Carsten Holler: Half Fiction
Building a Vision: Diller + Scofidio in Boston
The Institute of Contemporary Art Opens Two New Exhibitions on January 22, 2003
Carsten Holler: Half Fiction
For the past several years, Belgian-born artist Carsten Höller’s
interactive installations and sculptures have brought unexpected
experiences of play, travel, doubt, and happiness into museum settings.
In
the first solo museum exhibition of his work in the United States, the
Institute of Contemporary Art presents one of Höller’s slide
sculptures
which winds through the galleries of the ICA’s unconventional
open-plan
space as well as a number of other visual experiences that will give
visitors pause to question their surroundings and the traditional
process
of looking at art.
Entering on the second floor, visitors can ride Holler’s stainless
steel
slide sculpture, Slide #6, down two floors, passing under the
ICA’s
prominent central staircase. The artist has established that the
directed
and yet out-of-control movement of riding through a slide, the
unavoidable
journey, is one that induces both uncertainty and happiness. To reach
the
entrance to the slide, visitors move through Choice Corridor, a
disorienting and gradually darkening passageway that forces viewers to
rely on non-visual stimuli to navigate their way.
Other installations in the exhibition include Light Corner, two
freestanding walls holding 1,792 light bulbs flickering at a frequency
of
7.8 Hz, which induce strong retinal after-images; Black Sphere, a
human-sized spherical object made out of acrylic glass that has the
potential to work as a form of transport; and The Forest, a
special pair
of glasses containing a small LCD monitor in front of each eye that
allows
viewers to experience the effect of simultaneously seeing different
films
with each eye.
Höller has been working both independently and in collaboration with
other
artists for over ten years. Perhaps as a result of his earlier
scientific
training, his work has frequently set out to study a particular
concept—in
the past Höller has made series devoted to the idea of security,
children,
love, hallucinations, happiness, animals, games, doubt/certainty, and a
group of sculpture/vehicles that looked at different modes of travel.
Born
in Belgium to German parents, Carsten Höller has lived and worked in
Stockholm, Sweden, in recent years. His work has been exhibited
internationally most recently in the 2002 Sao Paulo Bienal, the 2001
Venice Biennial, and in one-person exhibitions at the Prada Foundation,
Milan, in 2000, and at Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York.
Building a Vision: Diller + Scofidio in Boston
Following the unveiling of Diller + Scofidio’s design for the
Institute of
Contemporary Art’s new waterfront museum on September 4, 2002, the
ICA
presents an exhibition about the development of the project from
beginning
concepts to the final design. Included in the exhibition are numerous
process models, which represent the earliest stages of the design
process
and the scope of the architects’ creative practice. Also on view
is a
model of the future ICA, a digital animation that gives viewers a sense
of
what it will be like to move through the interior spaces of the museum,
and schematic drawings.
Diller + Scofidio’s dramatic design for the ICA’s new
62,000-square-foot
museum integrates the city’s public Harborwalk into the building
and
produces shifting views of the waterfront throughout the galleries,
theatre, and public spaces. Bordering the north and west edges of the
ICA
site, the Harborwalk is metaphorically extended into the new building as
a
primary architectural element. The Harborwalk surface folds up from the
water’s edge to form a grandstand facing the harbor, continues
through the
glass skin following the contours of the 300-seat theater to envelop it,
then slips back out through the glass over the grandstand. Sitting
directly on top of this surface is the exhibition space, occupying one
full level. The exhibition space cantilevers over the grandstand toward
the water, forming the ceiling of the outdoor public area.
Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, who founded Diller + Scofidio in
1979, are architects and artists whose innovative work—from
site-specific
installations to commercial and institutional architectural projects to
housing and urban planning—unites design, performance, and digital
media
with cultural theory. In addition to the ICA project, Diller + Scofidio
are currently working on the The Museum of Art & Technology for Eyebeam
in
New York; the Brooklyn Academy of Music Cultural District, a master plan
in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas; and Facsimile, a permanent
installation for the new Moscone Convention Center expansion in San
Francisco.
The Institute of Contemporary Art
955 Boylston Street, Boston
617-266-5152 / www.icaboston.org
Open Wed + Fri, noon to 5pm; Thur, noon to 9pm; Sat + Sun, 11am to 5pm.
Admission $7 adults, $5 seniors and students, free children under
12, and
free on Thurs after 5pm