We consider the semilinear elliptic boundary value problem −∆u = |u| p−2 u in Ω, u = 0 on ∂Ω, in a bounded smooth domain Ω of R N for supercritical exponents p > 2N N −2 . Until recently, only few existence results were known. An approach which has been successfully applied to study this problem, consists in reducing it to a more general critical or subcritical problem, either by considering rotational symmetries, or by means of maps which preserve the Laplace operator, or by a combination of both.The aim of this paper is to illustrate this approach by presenting a selection of recent results where it is used to establish existence and multiplicity or to study the concentration behavior of solutions at supercritical exponents.