P i e r r e   H u y g h e

b. 1962, France
Lives and works in Paris, France

Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno Anna Sanders 1996 Magazines, 64 pp., edition 1,500 Courtesy of the artists

Oscillating between personal experience and its representation, Huyghe’s practice is geared toward producing what he calls “connective images” – or experiences – that attempt not to represent the world, but to place us at once within and outside the processes by which we visualize and construct our realities. Central to his work in film and in the “environments of displacement,” hybrid installations of architecture and design that he has produced, often in collaboration with others, is the experience of time. His projects involve the creation of interstitial spaces, like the gap in time which is the focus of L’Ellipse (1998), or blue carpet on which the magazine Anna Sanders (made with Philippe Parreno) is shown at the CCS, which dramatize subjective temporalities and the plurality of spaces, and focus on the transient relationships between the viewer, the experience, and the image.

Anna Sanders (1996)
Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno

Structured like a film and aping the stereotypes of the media genres so closely that it’s advertisements and features, stories and reports pass for authentic, Anna Sanders reveals the interchangeability of real and fictional personality traits, lifestyle features, and experiences, between the moving image and contemporary life.

The magazine takes its title from an imaginary character from a movie called “History of a Feeling.” On the cover is a blurred image of a woman’s face, halfway out of the frame. But this is not Anna Sanders, and the warning on the cover tells us that there will be no pictures of her inside the magazine either; instead her presence is expressed in the choice of articles and images, the advertisements and graphic design. The magazine is part of a proposal for a film; subsequent issues will develop other characters and aspects of the story. With Anna Sanders, Huyghe and Parreno exploit the fictional possibilities within the representation of reality in life/style magazines on newsstands and in cinema, and the relation of these genres to the experience of reality.

From the generic images of design, architecture and fashion, unspecific urban locations and vague but detailed narratives inside the magazine, we gather together a persona that is as real as it is fictional, as individual as it is off-the-shelf. Anonymous but ubiquitous, Anna Sanders is the cinematic subject sans pareil. In a perpetual state of becoming, fragmented and never fully realized, she represents what Gilles Deleuze has noted as the potential of film not just to represent a subject’s position but to create new forms of life. She inhabits the any-place-whatever of film – simultaneously nowhere in particular but recognizable anywhere – while stories proliferate around her, generating multiple, mobile, and contradictory realities.

See Philippe Parreno’s bio

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2003 Hugo Boss Prize, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. 2002 L’expedition scintillant: a musical, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria. 2001 Le Château de Turing, Pavillion Français, 49. Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy. Interludes, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. 2000 Kunsthalle, Zürich, Switzerland. Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montréal, Canada. The Third Memory, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France. Blanche-Neige Lucie, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. The Third Memory, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL. 1999 Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal. Some Negotiations, Kunstverein, München, Germany. L'Ellipse, Index, Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden. Motion Study, INOVA (Institute of Visual Arts), University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI. Le procès du temps libre, Wiener Secession, Vienna, Austria. 1998 ARC/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France. 1997 Storytellers, Le Consortium, Dijon, France.

Selected Group Exhibitions
2001 Animations, P.S.1, New York, NY. Arrêt sur Image, Kunst-werke, Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany. In Many Ways the Exhibition Already Happened, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, UK. Cine Casi Cine, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reine Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Forms Follow Fiction, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy. Cinema without Walls, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. International Triennale of Contemporary Art, Yokohama, Japan. Double Life, EA-Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria. Dévoler, Institut d'Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, France. Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, Turkey. 2000 Vivre sa Vie, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland. As it is, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK. Voilà, le monde dans la tête, ARC/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France. Let’s Entertain, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. Dial 33 then 1, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland. 1999 The Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, PA. Close Ups, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, Denmark. Notorious: Hitchcock and Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK. Cinema Cinema – Contemporary Art and the Cinematic Experience, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Soggettività e narrazione, Castello Di Rivoli, Turin, Italy. D'Apertutto (with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster & Philippe Parreno), 48. Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy. 1998 Trade Routes, 11^th Sydney Biennial, Australia. Manifesta 2, European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Luxembourg. Fast Forward, Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany. When World Collide, Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow, Scotland. Narrative Urge, Uppsalla Kunstmuseum, Uppsalla, Sweden. Le Donné, le Fictif, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, France. Musiques en Scène, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France. Voices, Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Further Reading
Birnbaum, Daniel, “Stick-up Artist: the Art of Pierre Huyghe,” Artforum International v.39 no.3 (Nov. 2000): 130-33
Coupland, Douglas & Pierre Huyghe, Pierre Huyghe: Encounters (Editions Dis Voir: France, 2003)
Estep, Jan, “Action! An interview with Pierre Huyghe,” New Art Examiner v.27 no.10 (Jul.-Aug. 2000): 30-35
Gillick, Liam, Philippe Parreno et.al., Pierre Huyghe, exh. cat. (Kunstverein München, Germany; Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland, 2000)
Gingeras, Alison, “Pierre Huyghe: Art in the Age of Enlightenment,” Art Press no.269 (Jun. 2001): 22-27
Hobbs, Robert, "Pierre Huyghe's Ellipses," Parkett no.66 (Feb. 2003): 156-67
Millar, Jeremy, "Travellers Tales," Parkett no.66 (Feb. 2003): 126-41
Obrist, Hans-Ulrich, "The Tale of One Thousand Signs," Parkett no.66 (Feb. 2003): 142-55
Obrist, Hans Ulrich, “Pierre Huyghe: Collaborating on Utopia,” Flash Art v.34 no.225 (Jul.-Sep. 2002): 76-81
Van Assche, Christine & Jean-Charles Masséra, Pierre Huyghe: The Third Memory (Editions du Centre Pompidou: Paris, France, 2000)

Artists

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