Carsten Höller’s reflective artwork reframes time experience
Carsten Höller installs Pink Mirror Carousel on the ice rink of the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz this winter, introducing a slowed, reflective amusement structure to the Alpine resort. Clad in pink mirrored panels and precisely calibrated to complete a full rotation every two minutes, the work takes a familiar fairground structure and transforms it into an immersive sculptural environment that folds time, movement, and spectatorship into a disorienting experience set against the Engadin landscape.
Installed outdoors on the hotel’s ice rink, Pink Mirror Carousel continues Höller’s long-standing engagement with amusement rides as what he calls ‘confusion machines.’ Rather than delivering speed or thrill, the carousel deliberately slows the body down. Its rotation becomes almost meditative, encouraging riders to register duration, repetition, and anticipation as material conditions. The structure is composed of twelve identical mirrored segments arranged as a dodecagon, reflecting skaters, riders, the surrounding mountains, and the carousel itself in shifting fragments.
all images courtesy of Kulm Hotel St. Moritz
Pink Mirror Carousel rotates on the Kulm Hotel ice rink
While earlier carousel works by Höller have required up to twenty-four hours for a single turn, the St. Moritz installation completes its cycle in exactly two minutes. This double minute references the carousel’s counter-rotating elements, with the top turning counter-clockwise and the middle section rotating clockwise. The result is a subtle but persistent sense of misalignment, where mechanical precision and bodily perception never fully sync. As Baldo Hauser, the Belgian artist’s alter ego, notes, the work functions as ‘a sculpture with people inside, animating the inanimate, the mechanical, the lifeless rotation with the realness of human bodies being transported through their own biological time.’
Music curated by the Kulm Hotel’s directeur d’ambiance, Arman Naféei, accompanies the skating rink, layering sound into the experience. Open to both hotel guests and the public, the installation operates as a shared, temporary situation.
Carsten Höller installs Pink Mirror Carousel on the ice rink of the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz
Pink Mirror Carousel continues Höller’s long-standing engagement with amusement rides
its rotation becomes almost meditative, encouraging riders to register duration
composed of twelve identical mirrored segments
reflecting skaters, riders, the surrounding mountains
Carsten Höller at the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz, Switzerland
project info:
name: Pink Mirror Carousel
artist: Carsten Höller | @carsten.holler
location: Kulm Hotel St. Moritz | @kulmhotel, St. Moritz, Switzerland
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