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22/2/2007

Pierre Huyghe

Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik

Solo show

Pierre Huyghe was born in Paris in 1962. He studied visual art at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, from which he graduated in 1985. Huyghe's work has been exhibited in many of the world's leading museums, including the Tate Modern in London in 2006, the Moderna in Stockholm in 2005, and the Guggenheim and The Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 2003. Huyghe represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2001. He lives and works in Paris.

In the latter part of the twentieth century French artists were not numerous in the world of international contemporary art, but toward the millennium they drew increasing attention, gaining eminence through participation in large international exhibitions. Nowadays French artists are conspicuous in prestigious international galleries such as The Marian Goodman Gallery, whose stable includes Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager and Pierre Huyghe. Other notable French artists who have come to prominence in recent years include Pierre & Gilles, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Jean-Mac Bustamante, the M/M design team, and Paris-based artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn.

Since 1990, Pierre Huyghe has attracted notice for diverse multimedia works in both conventional exhibition spaces and other public places. In addition to broad-ranging installations, he has exhibited photography, films, objects, posters, and works inviting public interventions. His artwork crystallizes his interest in qualities that can be discovered in all circumstances, creating tension between reality and imagination or facts and fabrication.

Exhibitions of Huyghe's work are distinguished by his efforts to develop the form of the exhibition, to shape the norm and approach to art in conventional exhibition spaces. Order and stability characterize conventional exhibitions, but contemporary art, including Huyghe's work, is characterized by mobility and instability. Time, motion, and location influence how the artworks come across and affect the viewer's experience.

The title of this exhibition at The Reykjavik Art Museum, LIVE - SHOW AS EXHIBITION, suggests how visitors may experience the works in a direct and unmediated way, like a performance of live music. The title also invites comparison between the experience of a staged production and the quiet experience characteristic of traditional art exhibitions.

The exhibit comprises three major installations, in three museum galleries, in which works from the Reykjavik Art Museum's collection are displayed and activated by a time protocol. In the course of the presentation the collective exhibition will become a show. In addition, three films/documents will present exhibitions taking the form of live public shows.

THIS IS NOT A TIME FOR DREAMING, 2004, 24 minutes
This work was originally created in conjunction with Harvard University in 2004. Huyghe was commissioned to create a work involving the Carpenter Center, designed by Le Corbusier, which houses Harvard's Fine Arts Department. Huyghe staged a puppet show in the building and filmed it. The puppet show details, in song and play, Le Corbusier's struggle to complete the building and Huyghe's similar experience in fulfilling his commission for the school. The architect's and artist's experiences, along with the building itself, form the basis of a dream-like film from the borderlands of imagination and reality. In his works Huyghe collaborates with other artists and in this work the text is by Liam Gillick, narrated by James Ackerman. The soundtrack includes excerpted from works by Edgard Varèse and Iannis Xenakis and excerpts from the song, Le temps des cerises, lyrics by Jean Baptiste Clément, interpreted by Charles Trenet.

A JOURNEY THAT WASN'T, 2006, 24 minutes
In this work, a convergence of reality, report, and fantastical staging is captured on film. Part of the movie was filmed in part on a journey to the Antarctic, which the artist undertook to search for a unique mythological creature. The creature is purported to live on an island, hitherto unexplored, which has emerged from under the ice cap because of global warming. The remainder of the picture was filmed in New York's Central Park, where Huyghe staged a reenactment of the trip.

STREAMSIDE DAY, 2003, 26 minutes
This film was made at a festival which the artist presided over in a new residential development in New York State. The festival was intended to celebrate the birth of this new community and thereafter to become an annual event in the life of the community's inhabitants. Huyghe creates an event full of entertainment and ritual which bodes to become a force in the annual town celebrations.

LIVE - SHOW AS EXHIBITION is a venue intended to create an atmosphere of freedom, celebration, and participation. The movies reflect Huyghe's interest in rituals, myths, fiction, and the image of truth presented in documentary films. The ideas in play here are orchestrated to create an atmosphere of challenge, in which questions of the moment can be freely and openly engaged. Supported by the French Embassy and CulturesFrance as part of Pourquoi Pas? - French Spring in Reykjavik, a citywide celebration of French culture in Reykjavik.

For further information please contact: Soffía Karlsdóttir soffia.karlsdottir@reykjavik.is
PR and Communications Manager of Reykjavik Art Museum

Reykjavik Art Museum
Tryggvagata 17 - Reykjavik
Open 10 - 17
The museum is open every day except on Christmas and New Years Day
The entrance ticket is valid for three days for all three museums.
Thursdays free

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