Aventura Slide Tower

Carsten Höller is known for large-scale artworks that draw upon amusement parks, playgrounds, and zoos. He seeks ways as an artist to transform common expectations of social spaces by altering perceptions and creating unexpected sensations – both physical and psychological. Höller applies his training as a scientist to his work as an artist, concentrating particularly on the nature of human relationships.

Promoting joy—or a feeling of “somewhere between delight and madness”—was Höller’s purpose when he created Aventura Slide Tower. “The emotional state created by traveling down the slide is a unique condition and was once described by the French writer Roger Caillois as ‘a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind,’” he says. “The slide can be experienced both by sliding down it or by viewing it from the outside with people coming down in it—which are different, but both powerful, experiences.”

 

The Aventura Slide Tower is currently closed for the season and will be reopening on Saturday, November 9.