Pierre Huyghe Makes Fondation Beyeler His Maze of Monsters
The French artist welcomes us into his “soulscape” for his latest solo exhibition.
From MoMA to Berghain, Pierre Huyghe’s speculative fiction knows no bounds. Next stop for the French artist is Fondation Beyeler, where he’s turning the Swiss museum into his “soulscape,” a winding, enigmatic portrait of his inner world.
Ambiguous yet ambitious, Huyghe’s new exhibition expands on the artist’s exploration between binaries – the metaphysical and fictional, the living and dead, the human and non-human. Ants spill from apertures in the walls, while masked figures twitch in corners alone. It’s as if each room is a portal into its own alternate dimension, shifting in voices, states, and modalities.
As with many of Huyghe’s works, it’s key to embrace the in-between, traversing through the labyrinth of new film, sound-based works, installations, and living organisms. But threading it all are the rhythms of “Apnea,” an artificial breathing organ which creates a respiratory common ground for all that awaits.
Elsewhere is Liminals, the artist’s most recent film, which he describes as an “incessant dance of matter,” where “every moment is a maybe.” Another work, “Alchima,” a breathing, humming “larval ancestor” of the human unconscious lying between doorways, while in “Light Dust,” a plume of colored dust becomes immortalized in air, unfolding across the surrounding floors, walls, and ceiling, freezing time and light with it.
“Fictions are vehicles that give us access to other possible worlds, to a counterfactual imagination,” the artist expressed. “Such fictions, separated from the known, unconstrained by the here and now, are open to speculation, to other roads not taken. They make it possible to experience ourselves from the outside.”
The exhibition is now on view at Fondation Beyeler through September 13. Head to the museum’s website for more information.
Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 101,
4125 Riehen,
Switzerland
