photo: © ANZAÏ

Kanazawa Sliding Doors

ArtistCarsten HÖLLER
Year2004
Material/ Techniquemixed media
Size/ DurationH230 × W256 × D1500cm
Copyright Notice© Carsten HÖLLER
Year of acquisition/ donation2005(作品購入年月日:2005/03/31)
DescriptionBorn in Brussels, Belgium in 1961. Lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.

After studying both plant pathology and agricultural entomology and obtaining his doctorate, Höller began to be active as an artist in the latter half of the 1980s. By making the most of different media, his expression is wide-ranging from a single three-dimensional piece to a large-scale installation occupying the whole space. His style on the whole is scientific and based on highly developed technology. We can fully realize through our experience of his work the unreliability of our perceptions and doubts about reality. Consequently our stirred sensitivity is stimulated and we can encounter aesthetic experiences even further.

This piece consists of five automatic doors. These double doors set in a corridor between two exhibition rooms are completely mirrored, so that we find ourselves being in the world surrounded by mirrors each time we pass through the doors. The opening and closing movement of automatic doors almost brings us back to daily life in a moment, but passing through the doors a few times, we repeatedly step into the same kind of space. When someone unexpectedly comes from the other side of the door, however, the mechanical repetition of this experience is broken, and it arouses our feelings of all sorts. As plural visitors are involved, unexpected events occur in the system structured by the artist. As a result, our experience is enriched through this work that cleverly uses the feature of the museum corridor where people come and go.

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