Carsten Holler's New Art Bar "Double Club"

For Carsten Höller, art can never be too much fun. The Belgian artist's latest installation takes that ethos to new heights: Double Club is both bar and exhibit, devoted to the idea of "opposite models," Höller says. Translation? A space divided into two parallel worlds: the rural Congo and a Euro metropolis. One side of the converted Victorian warehouse is a timber bar where one can order Congolese beer and barbequed goat; the other side's polished copper bar offers up expensive cocktails. In the restaurant, Andy Warhol prints sit side by side with works by the Kinshasa-based artist Monsengwo Kejwamfi. Even the music on the revolving dance floor is mixed by alternating African and British DJs.

Some Double Club goers may see a dash of colonialism in Höller's treatment of Africa and the West as Hegelian binaries. But the artist, who regularly visits the Democratic Republic of the Congo and who is donating the bar's profits to a charity for rape victims there, hopes his art-bar will change Western "Heart of Darkness"-type perspectives on the country. In any case, London's glitterai are fast making Double Club the new hot spot for party queens like Stella McCartney, who love tearing it up to those Congolese beats.