Pierre Huyghe

Pierre Huyghe was born in 1962 in Paris, France. He studied at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, Paris. The artist lives and works in Santiago, Chile.

Huyghe was a recipient of a DAAD Artist-in-Berlin grant (1999–2000). He received a Special Award from the Jury of the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, where he represented France. In 2002, he was awarded the Hugo Boss Award at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 2010, Huyghe received the Smithsonian Museum’s Contemporary Artist Award, in 2013, the Swiss Roswitha Haftmann Award, and in 2015, the Kurt Schwitters Award. Pierre Huyghe is the recipient of the 2017 Nasher Prize, awarded annually by the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.

In 2019, Pierre Huyghe was named Artistic Director of the Okayama Art Summit: IF THE SNAKE. In 2012, Huyghe’s work Untilled was one of the most critically acclaimed contributions to dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.

For Pierre Huyghe the exhibition ritual is an encounter with a sentient milieu that generates new possibilities of co-dependence between events or elements that unfold. The exhibition is an entity whose time and space, in which it appears, are constituents of its manifestation.  

His works are conceived as speculative fiction and often present themselves as continuity between a wide range of intelligent life forms, biological, technological and tangible inert matter that learn, modify and evolve. They are permeable, contingent and often indifferent to witnesses.  

Selected solo exhibitions include: Chimeras, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo (2023); Variants, Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker (2022); Pierre Huyghe – Offspring, Kunsten, Allborg (2022); After UUmwelt, Grande Halle, Parc de Ateliers, LUMA, Arles (2021); Pierre Huyghe, UUmwelt, Serpentine Galleries, London (2018); Pierre Huyghe – From Xue Bing’s Collection, Pond Society, organized by the New Century Art Foundation, Shanghai (2018); Pierre Huyghe: 2017 Nasher Prize Laureate, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2017); Pierre Huyghe, Espace Louis Vuitton Venice, Venice (2017); Pierre Huyghe: Untitled (Human Mask), Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen (2017); Pierre Huyghe: Untitled (Human Mask), Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Bilbao (2017); Pierre Huyghe: Untitled (Human Mask), David Winton Bell Gallery Brown University, Providence (2017); Pierre Huyghe Part I: Untilled Host, Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo (2017); Pierre Huyghe Part II: A Journey That Wasn’t – Creature, Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo (2017); Orphan Patterns, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2016); Pierre Huyghe: Tarrawarra International 2015, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Australia (2015); The Roof Garden Commission, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2015); Pierre Huyghe’s Untilled (liegender Frauenakt), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); Pierre Huyghe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2014), Pierre Huyghe, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2014); Pierre Huyghe, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013); El Dia del Ojo, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, México City (2012); Pierre Huyghe. La saison des fêtes, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Palacio de Cristal (2010); Celebration Park, Tate Modern, London and ARC, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (both 2006); Streamside Day Follies, Dia Center for the Arts, New York (2003); The Hugo Boss Prize 2002 Exhibition, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2003); L’expédition scintillante. A musical, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz (2002), and The Third Memory, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2000). 

Selected group exhibitions and biennales in which the artist participated include: Lacan, The Exhibition, Centre Pompidou, Metz (2023 – 24); Avant L’orage, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2023); Our Ecology, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2023); FUTURA. Measuring Time, Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2022), Fractional Expressions, Castello di Rivoli Museao d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2022), No ghost Just a Shell, Singapore Biennale, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2022), In the line of Fight, for the possible worlds, Deji Museum, Nanjing (2022), Une seconde d’éternité, Bourse de Commerce | Pinault Collection, Paris (2022), 58th October Salon: The Dreamers, Belgrade (2021); Sun Rise I Sun Set, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2021); Sound and Silence, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn (2021); Taipei Biennial 2020: You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (2020); Meditations in an Emergency, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2020); Co/Inspiration in Catastrophes, MOCA Taipei, Taipei (2019); IF THE SNAKE, Okayama Art Summit 2019, Okayama (2019); Distance Intime. Chefs-d'oeuvre de la Collection Ishikawa, MO.CO. – Montpellier Contemporain, Hôtel des Collections, Montpellier (2019); Creatures. When Species Meet, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2019); Préhistoire et Modernité, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2019); Sanguine/Bloedrood. Luc Tuymans on Baroque, M HKA, Antwerp (2018); GIVE UP THE GHOST, Baltic Triennial 13, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2018); In Tune with the World, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2018); Infinite Garden. From Giverny to Amazonia, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz (2017); Field Guide, Remai Modern, Saskatoon (2017); Take Me (I’m Yours), Pirelli / Hangar Biccoca, Milan (2017); Development, Okayama Summit, Okayama (2016); Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016, Whitney Museum, New York (2016); Live Uncertainty, 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo (2016); Are We Human?, 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial, Istanbul (2016); Historical Exhibition: Sites Under Construction, Manifesta 11 – The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Zurich (2016); Salt Water: A theory of thought forms, 14th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2015); The heart is a lonely hunter, YARAT Contemporary Art Center, Baku (2015); Experience infinita, MALBA, Buenos Aires (2015); Burning Down The House, 10th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2014); The Vincent Award 2014, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague (2014).

The artist’s work is represented in the collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Kunstmuseum Basel; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Tate Modern, London, among others.