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(ART REVIEW) CARSTEN HOLLER: AMUSEMENT PARK
1.26.06
CARSTEN HOLLER:
AMUSEMENT PARK
MASS MoCA
North Adams, Mass., 413.662.2111, www.massmoca.org.
Opening on January 21, 2006
Running through October 2006
The new installation in MASS MoCA’s massive Building 5 gallery, Amusement Park by Belgian/Swedish artist Carsten Holler, received its public preview last weekend to a bemused, amused crowd. As the name indicates, the installation consists in large part – or perhaps totally – of amusement park rides, including five vintage and contemporary rides: a Gravitron, bumper cars, a Twister, and others. There is also a related installation, Revolving Doors, in an upstairs gallery consisting of mirrored revolving doors, a sort of post-modern twist on the funhouse of mirrors.
So what? What’s the big deal about putting amusement park rides in a museum space? Does that make it art? Well, putting aside the big question of what is and isn’t art for a moment (actually, putting it aside totally – this is a blog, after all, not a work of advanced epistemology), for one, these rides are all works of art in the sense that they are all creations whose design, shape, and color are appealing and effective and elicit emotional responses in the viewer. By putting them in a museum space, they also ask to be looked at and appreciated more for their design than they typically do in their more native setting. The Gravitron, in particular, is a behemoth of a structure that evokes a carnivalesque version of the mother-ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
In this setting, these objects are considered “kinetic sculptures” according to MASS MoCA. The kinetic aspect is somewhat controversial, as the rides have been slowed down to the point that they move almost imperceptibly (true confession: I actually didn’t even NOTICE that they were moving because I didn’t take the time to stand still and really look at them, until someone pointed out to me that all except the bumper cars WERE moving). Seeing them move at this incremental pace could have different effects on a viewer: it is poignant, bespeaks decay, but also raises notions of time and relativity. There is more going on here, in other words, than meets the eye.
The exhibition initially promised also to have a sonic aspect, but for the opening, at least, Holler apparently decided to scrap the soundtrack. It’s possible he may add it back in at some point, and he also apparently plans to alter movements and other aspects of the presentation based on viewer feedback and his own whim, so it will pay to revisit this installation at several times over the course of its incarnation at MoCA.
The opening itself was fun, too, especially for fans of David Byrne, who was in attendance. For the coolest man on earth, MASS MoCA was apparently THE place to be last Saturday night.
--Seth Rogovoy
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