View of “Pierre Huyghe,” 2014. From left: Nymphéas Transplant (14–18), 2014; La déraison, 2014; Nymphéas Transplant (12.21.1914), 2014.
Pierre Huyghe
Hauser & Wirth London | Old Bond St
The white cube is “a curious piece of real estate,” as Brian O’Doherty once wrote; with Pierre Huyghe, this property just gets curiouser and curiouser. Ordinarily, an art gallery is a clean, bright place, the exclusive domain of Homo sapiens. In Huyghe’s exhibition “In. Border. Deep.,” it became a dark, cavernous home for strange life forms.
The space was sliced into two oddly shaped halves. The first housed some extraordinary variations on the idea of “living sculpture,” along with a wall work, about which more later. In the second, further subdivided into two irregular black boxes, two short films were screened concurrently. De-extinction (all works 2014) shows prehistoric insects trapped in thirty-million-year-old sap; close-ups of their broken corpses are accompanied by the amplified, thunderous whirs and jolts of the camera. The other film, Human Mask—the artwork that
Artforum print subscribers have full access to this article. If you are a subscriber, sign in below.
Not registered for artforum.com?
SUBSCRIBE NOW for only $50 a year—65% off the newsstand price—and get the print magazine plus full online access to this issue and our archive.*
Order the PRINT EDITION of the January 2015 issue for $17 or the ONLINE EDITION for $5.99.
* This rate applies to U.S. domestic subscriptions.