Holding a doctorate in agricultural science, Carsten Höller often approaches art from the mindset of a scientist, turning the exhibition hall into what he terms a “Laboratory of Doubt.” Blending methodical investigation with playful and at times unsettling interventions, he encourages audiences to question how they see the world, themselves, and others. His works frequently generate surprise, laughter, or even dizziness—through slides that spiral through galleries, goggles that flip visual orientation, or settings that manipulate light, sound, and scale. These encounters destabilize habitual ways of perceiving, opening space for reflection on behavior, consciousness, and the precarious line between belief and uncertainty.

As Höller shifted his focus to art in the early 1990s, he quickly crossed paths with contemporaries who were likewise experimenting around the intersections of art, space, and social experience. This approach that would later be described as “Relational Aesthetics,” underscoring an emphasis on exchange and context. Over the past thirty years, Höller has examined how games, amusement park devices, and everyday technologies can be reconfigured to provoke unfamiliar modes of perception. Many of his installations shape collective environments, urging participants to reconsider their own positions within them. His scientific training also resurfaces in works involving plants and animals, whose forms and colors he distorts or amplifies, prompting new perspectives on humanity’s relationship with other species.

At UCCA, Höller will present a constellation of his signature works together with new projects created specifically for Beijing. Conceived as a series of evolving experimental encounters, the exhibition will plunge visitors into shifting perceptual states, encouraging them to experience time, space, and social relations in unexpected and transformative ways. This exhibition is curated by UCCA Director Philip Tinari.

About the Artist

Carsten Höller (b. 1961, Belgium) lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden; in Biriwa, Ghana; and in Tuscany, Italy. He has a background as a researcher in agricultural science and received his doctorate in 1988 at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU), Germany, with a thesis on insect scent communication. In the early 1990s, he completely devoted himself to his artistic work.

Carsten Höller’s works have been shown internationally over the past three decades, with major installations and solo exhibitions including “Synchro System” (Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2000); “One Day, One Day” (Färgfabriken, Stockholm, 2003); “Test Site” (Tate Modern, London, 2006); “Amusement Park” (2006), a large installation of full-sized carnival midway rides operating at dramatically slowed speeds at MASS MoCA North Adams; The Double Club (2008–09), a work that created a dialogue between Congolese and Western culture in the form of a bar, restaurant, and nightclub in London; "Soma" (Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2010); "Experience" (New Museum, New York, 2011); Decision (Hayward Gallery, London, 2015); "Doubt" (Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan, 2016); Y (Centro Botín, Santander, 2017); The Florence Experiment (Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2018); SUNDAY (Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, 2019); DAY (MAAT, Lisbon, 2021); a third version of The Double Club (2024), which was installed for four days in Los Angeles in conjunction with the exhibition "Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy". In 2024, Giant Triple Mushroom (2024) was temporarily installed at Place Vendôme in Paris as part of the Art Basel public programs. The same year, the second edition of Höller’s Book of Games/Spielebuch was published by Taschen. In 2022, he opened Brutalisten—a restaurant with brutalist cuisine where each dish consists of only one ingredient—in Stockholm.