Curated by Massimiliano Gioni

Part science-fair project, part theme-park attraction, and part Oldenburgian baroque, the installations of Carsten Höller are somatic adventures. The viewer may find herself immersed in a flood of strobe lights, a sensory-deprivation tank, or an inter-species exchange with reindeer, canaries, and houseflies. Whether Höller provides spiritual hallucinations and out-of-body experiences or simply a fun-house version of contemporary art, he never fails to deliver a spectacular, crowd-pleasing presentation that derives its frisson from positioning art audiences as guinea pigs—and, by extension, turning the art exhibition into a Pavlovian experiment. For the Belgian-born artist’s first New York survey, works from the extent of Höller’s career will fill the entire New Museum, while the scientific aura of his work will be accentuated by a catalogue formatted as an encyclopedia, with entries by curator Massimiliano Gioni, Daniel Birnbaum, Lynne Cooke, Hal Foster, and others.

— Lars Bang Larsen