Massive Slide Added to a Miami Shopping Mall
Earlier this week at a luxury shopping mall in a suburb of Miami, passersby heard an unlikely sound coming from high overhead: a disembodied, high-pitched scream. A few seconds later, the actress Chloë Sevigny emerged at ground level from a sizeable steel cavity.
Sevigny was in Miami to officially inaugurate the Belgian-German artist Carsten Höller’s first permanent slide in the United States. The slide—one of Höller’s largest to date—is a site-specific commission by the Aventura Mall, a high-end shopping center that also purchases and presents contemporary art.
After her maiden voyage on the slide, Sevigny and Höller, who are longtime friends, climbed the 93-foot-tall tower together to travel in tandem down the double-barreled structure.
Carsten Höller and Chloë Stevens Sevigny; Sevigny descending the Slide Tower.
Höller’s installation rises high above an outdoor courtyard and welcomes visitors to the mall’s new three-level expansion, which opened its first phase late last year. The slide, titled Aventura Slide Tower, is one of 15 works in the mall’s growing collection—and its boldest statement yet.
The mall’s owners began building the collection in 2005, after some prodding from local collector and philanthropist Norman Braman. “He told me that Aventura is our town’s hub—we get over 28 million visitors a year—so it is our responsibility to bring culture to people,” Jackie Soffer, co-chairman and CEO of the real estate developer Turnberry Associates, which owns and manages the mall, told artnet News.
Since then, Soffer has sought to collect high-quality art with a special focus on interactive pieces that “provide experiences that some of our visitors would not otherwise have.” The project is also a canny way to attract audiences at a time when malls across the country are closing and the retail industry is fighting for survival amid the rise of online shopping.
Strolling through the second-largest retail space in the country, shoppers can now view Instagram-friendly sculptures and installations by artists including Louise Bourgeois, the Haas Brothers, Gary Hume, Julian Opie, Ugo Rondinone, and Lawrence Weiner. (The company declined to specify its annual acquisition budget or the cost of the Höller project.)