It’s just a working carousel in an art gallery, no big deal. We are not only used to such wholesale borrowings from the real world, we might expect as much from Carsten Hölller.
This Belgian, after all, is the artist responsible for turning Tate Modern and Hayward Gallery into theme parks (as if they weren’t already), with adrenalin-pumping slides up to 58 metres long.
But Karussell won’t increase your heartbeat. It moves slower than the second hand of a clock. And you can look, but for once I don’t think you can touch this piece or ride one of the tiny chairs.
What you get instead is a mental journey, from the post industrial city in which this piece is now on show, to perhaps a village green in some low country at the time of a summer fayre.
Duck ponds, picturesque copses, and church spires are painted all around the crown, while the central column of this aging machine features folksy still life arrangements of flowers.
Also, it should be mentioned that Karussell revolves in silence, bringing a pastoral mood of peace and quiet into what is an otherwise loud show at BPS22, visually and otherwise.
So, once you’ve dispensed with music and thrills, what does a carousel offer you? My guess is that were you to climb on board you’d feel safe, bored, and conspicuous.
You’d feel especially foolish if you tried to fit into one of the gold hovercars. Headlights blazing, these chariots of the air are completely at odds with their tame, nostalgic context.
The utopia from which they come is already out of date. It is so out of date, their quotation here, in a show about folk culture, is laughable. Are we to laugh at the rustic families who once enjoyed these?
Or is the joke on us, as we imagine ourselves boarding a round trip to a more idyllic time, when the local coal mines were still open and painting a church was a simple act of faith?
Karussell can be seen until 31 January 2016 in Les Mondes Inversés: Contemporary Art and Popular Cultures at BPS22: Musée d’Art de la Province de Hainault, Charleroi, Belgium.