Carsten Höller - Leben

More about the book

A catalog as puzzling and conceptually elaborate as the exhibition it accompanies, this circular publication has no beginning or end, and allows multiple points of entryfrom left to right and vice versa, as well as upside down and right-side up. Seeking to interrupt learned behaviors and solicit the readers active engagement, it unfolds a play of doubling and symmetry that references the exhibits formally and in terms of content. This intertwining is also evident in the text around which the catalog pivots: a conversation between Carsten Hller, who studied phytopathology before embarking on his artistic career, and the taxidermist Alfred Hller, on taxidermy (birds in particular), the history of the origins of Thomas Bernhards infamous novel Correction (which Bernard wrote in Alfred Hllers attic in 1974), and the conflicts between life and death and art and nature.