Pierre Huyghe is a multi-disciplinary artist who explores the semiotics of images, and the intersection of fiction and reality through film, sculpture and public interventions. Huyghe graduated from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in 1985 and is renowned for his innovation of the 'post-production' technique in the 1990s, which involves the reproduction of art forms through pre-existing films and images from mass media.
Read MoreAmong Huyghe's most well-known work is L'Ellipse (1998), in which the artist fills the narrative gap of a jump-cut from Wim Wenders' film The American Friend (1977). Huyghe's revision stars Bruno Ganz, who also starred in the original film. In The Third Memory (2000), Huyghe blurs the line between fact and fiction by re-enacting a hold-up scene in a bank in Sidney Lumet's film Dog Day Afternoon (1975). In Huyghe's film, a protagonist playing bank robber John Wojtowicz expresses how Dog Day Afternoon influenced him instead of recounting the actual heist, thus confounding the viewer as to the actuality of the event.
Huyghe also regularly blurs fact and fiction in his public interventions and 'living systems'—environments in which he often incorporates live creatures such as insects, plants, animals and humans. A Forest of Lines (2008)—Huyghe's commission for the 2008 Biennale of Sydney—consisted of 1000 trees embedded in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. The installation erased the boundaries between the art and its spectators, allowing them to become the performers of the work.
Huyghe regularly collaborates with other artists, namely Philippe Parreno with whom he purchased the rights to a manga character called AnnLee in 1999. AnnLee has appeared in several of his works and those of other artists, including Parreno's 3D film Anywhere Out of the World (2000), which sees AnnLee declare her ambiguous existence as exempt from copyright restrictions, calling attention to the notion of authorship that is regularly explored throughout Huyghe's practice.
Huyghe's work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, including Streamside Day at Moderna Museet, Stockholm in 2005; Streamside Day + Streamside Day Follies at Dia Center for the Arts, New York in 2003; and No Ghost Just A Shell at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in 2005, to name a few. In 2001 he received the Special Jury Prize of the 49th Venice Biennale, followed by the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation's Hugo Boss Prize in 2002. Huyghe lives and works in Paris and New York.
Tessa Moldan | Ocula | 2018
Ocula Report Taipei Dangdai 2020: Local and Global By Penny Liu, Taipei At the second edition of Taipei Dangdai, western capital gestures towards Taipei's rising status in the global art world, while alluding to 'a token blessing from the West to Taiwanese society, which is known to have a strong collector base.'
Ocula Report Taipei Lowdown: Shows to See By Tessa Moldan, Taipei As Taipei Dangdai returns for its second edition between 17 and 19 January 2020 at the Nangang Exhibition Center, a selection of exhibitions across the city confirm Taipei as one of the region's most exciting art hubs.
Ocula Conversation Pierre Huyghe: The Artist as Director By Stephanie Bailey, Okayama Pierre Huyghe is a producer of spectacular and memorable enigmas, with works that function more like mirages than as objects. Abyssal Plain (2015–ongoing), his contribution to the 2015 Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, was installed on the seabed of the Marmara Sea, some 20 metres below the surface of the water and...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future By Stephanie Bailey, Okayama There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. This report explores some of these shows, concluding with Pierre Huyghe's Okayama Art Summit.
Related Press The Art Newspaper's pick of the 2019 Venice Biennale 30 April 2019, The Art Newspaper There are hundreds of exhibitions in Venice during the Biennale. Alongside the main exhibition in the Giardini and Arsenale, there are 90 national presentations, many in nearby pavilions in the Giardini and in spaces around the Arsenale, but also dotted throughout Venice. Then there are the official collateral exhibitions in museums and galleries...
Related Press Pierre Huyghe’s “UUmwelt” 19 December 2018, art agenda Five large, freestanding LED panels fill the spaces of the Serpentine. Despite their technological nature, they look like temporary plaster walls and give the rooms a stripped appearance. Images scroll onscreen at high speed. In the darkened exhibition space, they have peculiar light and colors, cold and clear tones. Sounds can be heard, but like...
Related Press Ugo Rondinone 'I ♥ John Giorno' at Various venues, New York 27 July 2017, Mousse Magazine Ugo Rondinone: I ♥ John Giorno —the first major U.S. exhibition about the American poet, artist, activist and muse John Giorno—has opened simultaneously across 13 locations in New York City. I ♥ John Giorno is a work of art by Giorno's husband, the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone. The exhibition is a celebration of the life and work of...
Related Press John Giorno 25 July 2017, artforum.com I learned early on from the eats, such as Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs—and the Pop artists too—that archives were very important. This was around the late 1950s, or the beginning of the '60s. So, I just saved all of my work. My parents had a house in Roslyn Heights, Long Island, and for fifty years I brought everything I made...
Related Video & Audio Pierre Huyghe: UUmwelt 30 October 2018, Serpentine Galleries Curator Rebecca Lewin discusses Pierre Huyghe's exhibition UUmwelt. Known for creating complex immersive ecosystems, Huyghe presents a major new exhibition at the Serpentine. For the exhibition, the Gallery has become a porous and contingent environment, housing different forms of cognition, emerging intelligence, biological reproduction and...
