Carsten Höller
The guy who put the slides in the Turbine hall of the Tate. Here’s an excerpt from quite an interesting article on him, “Before and after Science” in a 2004 issue of Frieze;
The objects and situations Höller has created are bewildering in their variety. His work since the early 1990s has encompassed buildings, vehicles, slides, toys, games, narcotics, animals, performances, lectures, 3D films, flashing lights, mirrors, eye-wear and sensory deprivation tanks. This diversity not only defies all formal categories of art-making; it also blurs the lines between what it means to be an artist and what it means to belong to a whole range of other professions, even in an era when the Postmodern slogan ‘anything goes’ has become a cliché. The job descriptions Höller’s work calls to mind include zoologist, botanist, paediatrician, physiologist, psychologist, occupational therapist, pharmacist, optician, architect, vehicle designer, evolutionary theorist and political activist. Most of these belong to the scientific sphere, which reflects Höller’s own educational background, to post-doctoral level, in phytopathology and agronomic entomology. (By the late 1980s, when he first began making art, he was specializing in insect communication.)
For Höller the problem with science is that the profession forces you down the route of ever-increasing specialization. Contemporary art, by comparison, represents a wide-open field. Since his unusual career shift Höller, as much as any of his contemporaries, has been responsible for making that field even wider. Ironically, much of this has been done by transforming devices and techniques originating in different areas of scientific research into various forms of participatory sculpture and installation.
