Art Basel Paris 2024: A giant mushroom by Carsten Höller grows in Place Vendôme

Would Paris be under the influence of a hallucinogenic mushroom ? After Alicja Kwande’s stone globes and Urs Fischer’s metallic wave, a completely different specimen has come to decorate Place Vendôme for contemporary art week in Paris: a giant inedible mushroom. One…or maybe three?

Beneath its false appearance of an extraterrestrial, this monumental sculpture of three meters high could just as easily come out of the tale ofAlice in Wonderland than the latest Tim Burton film. The strange filmmaker has nothing to do with this plant hallucination; we owe this fantastic vision to Carsten Höller, contemporary artist by day and doctor of biology by night. The visual artist known for his psychedelic installations plants a mushroom of unknown shape, hybrid, almost radioactive, a mutant we could say since it combines the forms of three wild species, two harmless, one painfully toxic.

With its bright red hat spotted with white, its immaculate veil and its ribbed slats, this fanciful work deliciously mistreats our senses as if we were victims of indigestion from a poisonous mushroom. Fortunately, no one should be able to pick and put this poisonous work in their basket.

Do you want to go further? Read our article on Art Basel Paris 2024

PLACE VENDÔME
From October 15 to November 24, 2024
Pl. Vendôme, 75001 – M° Tuileries (1)
Tlj. 7am-10pm – Free entry