This monographic exhibition by Cartsen Höller brings together a vast series of works that produce light and darkness. Sculptures with lamps, projections and architectural elements, covering a period from 1987, when Höller was still working as a scientist, until today.
More than twenty pieces, many of them specially recreated for the exhibition, unfold throughout the museum in organized paths that enter into a dialogue with its unique spatial character of organic curvatures, narrow limits and volumes of different dimensions and luminosity. Devoid of any support structure, nor using any lighting system incorporated in the museum, the space is only illuminated by the works themselves, leading the audience through multisensory experiences of altered perception.
The day also extends abroad, presenting for the first time Light Wall (2021), a work erected outdoors at the museum entrance, with a variety of lamps that shine at a mesmerizing frequency of 7.8 Hz. Lisbon Dots ( 2006/2021), also presented here for the first time in the oval room in the center of the museum, is an interactive installation made up of 20 spotlight projectors that follow people’s movements and allow them to play a game of distancing and social proximity. In collaboration with Acute Art, the avant-garde producer of pieces by AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed reality), directed and curated by Daniel Birnbaum, the exhibition also expands to the digital dimension , with a special application to debut in Lisbon.
The iconic work Two Roaming Beds (2015) is also presented, in which visitors will have the unique opportunity to spend a night inside the museum, where everything on display can be experienced in privacy. The beds will move at random and will leave a nocturnal wandering trail, in the form of a colored line on the floor, which will add up over time to create a gigantic design.
As part of the exhibition, the public program Medições 7.8Hz will take place, curated by Mariana Pestana, between November 2021 and February 2022.
Meditations 7.8 Hz is a set of performances and a publication on vinyl that brings together contributions from contemporary thinkers and composers in the form of meditations, embodying a resonance between the Earth and the human being. 7.8 Hz is the frequency of the human brain waves during the relaxed state of “daydreaming”. Launched at a time marked by a global environmental crisis and a state of social isolation with profound psychological repercussions, this performance-publication presents the public with a sequence of therapeutic textual and sound compositions, reminding us that ecological interdependence is radical and totalizer.
@ MAAT
