Pierre Huyghe: In Border Deep,Hauser & Wirth

Arguably one of contemporary art’s hottest properties, Pierre Huyghe’s debut exhibition at Hauser & Wirth is likely to be this autumn’s most coveted show.

With a critically acclaimed retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in 2013 travelling to Cologne and LA this year, along with a string of international solo exhibitions in recent years including The Guggenheim in New York, Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, and Tate Modern; it’s fair to say that Huyghe is at the top of his aesthetic game. 

There’s been much anticipation around the Hauser & Wirth show, full details of which have kept under strict embargo until the opening. All we know is that the exhibition will consist of completely new works encompassing site-specific objects, sculptures, aquariums and films.

Huyghe, who is indelibly linked with relational aesthetics, is something of an artist cum-philosopher. His deeply immersive works – varying widely from living ecosystems, objects, films, photographs, drawings and music – often blur fact with fiction and tackle complex social topics such as the yearning for utopia or the lure of the spectacle in mass media. 

Untilled (2012), his Documenta 2013 installation, was set in a compost heap featuring a rescued Ibizan Hound, Human, her handler Martin and a reclining nude with an enormous beehive obscuring its head. In his Pompidou retrospective, Human and her master wandered through the crowds, the reclining nude kept isolated behind a low wall, and a mesmerising film starring Human told a story of adventure in unchartered territory. Present in both experiences is a strange collision between real and artifice, control and self-determination. In the words of his fellow artist Rirkrit Tiravanija: “Pierre Huyghe has a talent for creating a cultural confrontation out of the most unexpected elements.”

Like Huyghe’s previous shows, his debut at Hauser & Wirth will prove to be unexpected yet full of depth, beguiling if not baffling – and will certainly be one not to be missed.