Museum Ludwig

PIERRE HUYGHE
11 April – 13 Ju­ly 2014

Pierre Huyghe (b. 1962 in Paris), ma­jor fig­ure in the in­ter­na­tio­n­al con­tem­po­rary art scene, has been work­ing with time-based si­t­u­a­tions and has ex­plored the ex­hi­bi­tion pro­cess from the 90’s and ear­ly 2000s. His works take on such di­verse forms as liv­ing sys­tems, ob­jects, films, pho­to­graphs, draw­ings and mu­sic. The ex­hi­bi­tion at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig is the first ma­jor sur­vey of his work to date in Ger­many, bring­ing to­gether over 60 works and Pro­jects.

In The Host and the Cloud, a live ex­per­i­ment was car­ried out over the course of one year in an aban­doned ethno­graph­ic Mu­se­um in Paris. A group of peo­ple were ex­posed to live si­t­u­a­tions that ap­peared ac­ci­den­tal­ly in the en­tire build­ing. The Host and the Cloud is a ri­t­u­al of se­pa­ra­tion in which the in­flu­ences of a cul­ture were ex­or­cized, brought to contin­gen­cy, by a self-gen­er­at­ing op­er­a­tion. Some wit­ness­es in­vit­ed to en­ter the build­ing were left alone within the un­fold­ing ex­per­i­ment. In par­al­lel the event was filmed.

Dur­ing dOC­U­MEN­TA(13), Pierre Huyghe cre­at­ed Un­tilled, a com­post site within a baroque gar­den, a non hi­erarchi­cal as­so­ci­a­tion that in­clud­ed a sculp­ture of a re­clin­ing nude with a head ob­s­cured by a swarm­ing bee­hive, aphro­disi­ac and psy­chotrop­ic plants, a dog with a pink leg, an up­root­ed oak tree from Joseph Beuys’ 7,000 Oaks among other el­e­ments. This grow­ing sys­tem re­mained in­d­if­fer­ent to the pres­ence of the view­ers that en­coun­tered the site.
Both the dog, Hu­man, and the sculptue with the bee­hive-head are part of the ex­hi­bi­tion in Cologne.

For the first venue of this ret­ro­spec­tive—the Cen­tre Ge­orges Pompi­dou—the ex­hi­bi­tion root­ed it­self within the re­mains of the pre­vi­ous show, ded­i­cat­ed to Mike Kel­ley. Pierre Huyghe used the ex­ist­ing walls, dis­placed and cut them in or­der to place his works. For the se­cond pre­sen­ta­tion or “oc­cur­rence” at the Lud­wig Mu­se­um, the works at­tached to their walls have been cut out of their pre­vi­ous en­vi­ron­ment and dis­placed to the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, en­ter­ing in con­tra­dic­tion with a dif­fer­ent ex­hi­bi­tion con­text and con­di­tion. For the artist, the ex­hi­bi­tion unites a dy­nam­ic sys­tem of works vary­ing in in­ten­si­ty, from which should emerge the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an event.

Pierre Huyghe has had nu­mer­ous in­ter­na­tio­n­al so­lo ex­hi­bi­tions at such venues as Tate Mod­ern, Lon­don; the Solo­mon R. Gug­gen­heim Mu­se­um, New York; the French Pav­ilion of the Venise Bien­nale; the Van Abbe­mu­se­um, Eind­hoven, and Rei­na So­fia, Ma­drid. He has al­so par­ti­ci­pat­ed in a num­ber of in­ter­na­tio­n­al col­lec­tive ex­hi­bi­tions such as dOC­U­MEN­TA 11 and 13.

He was award­ed the Spe­cial Ju­ry Prize for the French Pav­ilion at the Venice Bien­nale (2001), the Hu­go Boss Prize at the Gug­gen­heim Mu­se­um (2002), the Smith­so­nian Mu­se­um’s Con­tem­po­rary Artist Award (2010), and the Roswitha Haft­mann Award (2013).

A ca­t­a­logue in En­glish with a Ger­man insert is be­ing pub­lished by Hirmer Ver­lag, in­clud­ing con­tri­bu­tions by Tris­tan Gar­cia, Em­ma Lavi­gne, Vin­cent Nor­mand and the artist, as well as in­tro­duc­to­ry texts by Ka­tia Baudin and Jar­rett Gre­go­ry.

The ex­hi­bi­tion was or­ganized by the Cen­tre Pompi­dou, Musée Na­tio­n­al d’Art Mod­erne, Paris, in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, Cologne, and the Los An­ge­les Coun­ty Mu­se­um of Art.