Carsten Holler turns gallery into 'disturbing' playground

A new exhibition has turned the Hayward Gallery on London's South Bank into a playground, filling the gallery's rooms and terraces with interactive installations including a giant slide.

While most critics agree that Carsten Holler's show Decision, which opens at the Hayward today, will be a hit, some suggest it is just a "gimmick".

It's not the first time the Belgian artist, described by The Guardian as "the Willy Wonka of contemporary art", has explored the playground theme in his work.

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In 2006, Holler installed five giant slides at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall that were "a big hit with the public", says the BBC. In his new show, a giant double slide has been attached to the outside of the Hayward.

Holler calls the slide a device for "experiencing an emotional state that is a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness". The aim of this show, he says, is to make visitors reflect on the choices they make. Their final decision will be whether to exit the show soberly, via the stairs, or to shoot out of one of the giant transparent slide tubes.

Other works include a giant mobile of psychedelic mushrooms, a pair of robotic beds that roam around the gallery, pills dropping from the ceiling and a flying machine that will give visitors the sensation of soaring above city traffic.

If there is one thing you should do this summer, writes Ben Rowe in Time Out, it's to head over to the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank "to partake in the awesomeness".

Visitors should "0repare to be amazed" by exhibits ranging from alternative reality goggles to flying machines that are "not for the faint of heart or vertigo suffers", he adds. And when you're finished, take "the best exit of any show, EVER".

Adrian Searle in The Guardian says: "Holler's show is funny, but it is even more disturbing."

The experience is not entirely benign, despite the funfair rides and the jokes, he says. "Holler encourages us to take risks, destabilises us and make us feel more alive."

Who says Belgians are boring? asks Rachell Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Decision is "nothing if not liberating" and what it misses out on in fairground excitement, it begins to make up for afterwards. "As you mull it all over, deeper meanings may start to emerge," he adds.

Rupert Hawksley in the Daily Telegraph is not so sure: "Is it, ultimately, though just an elaborate gimmick?" he asks.

Hewonders what exactly the show wants to be. Is it "a theme park with some art thrown in for credibility or a serious exhibition?" That, he says, "is the one decision that nobody seems to have taken".