Pierre Huyghe Solo Exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, China

‘When starting a project, I often need to create a world. Then, I will enter this world, and m[...]

‘When starting a project, I often need to create a world. Then, I will enter this world, and my exploration within it is the work itself.’ – Pierre Huyghe. Five blind Mexican tetras swim quietly in an artificial cave fish tank. Since the establishment of the Wenxin Art Institute in 2019, they have coexisted harmoniously with this space. After five years, the naked stone carving is already covered with red algae, and the aquarium no longer requires additional feeding. As the day and night in Taiwan change, this work has formed a self-sufficient ecosystem and maintained its own balance. French artist Pierre Huyghe raises the question of whether blind fish have evolved due to different circadian rhythms, thus exploring the dynamic relationship between organisms and the environment. This also makes us question our own way of survival. The interaction between humans and non-humans plays an important role in Huyghe’s works. Whether it is animals, plants, or neural networks, these elements can learn, adjust, and evolve. Huyghe said: ‘Usually, we regard exhibitions as an end, the result of something. However, exhibitions are actually not the end of a process but a constantly changing ritual – it is the starting point to other places.’ He believes that art is not simply a display but an evolving process experience. In his works and exhibitions, this is not only the display of art but also a process that promotes audience thinking and participation. This time, the work ‘Camata’, which was exhibited at the Punta della Dogana Museum of Modern Art in Venice, continues to be shown at Wenxin. This video was shot on a skeleton in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Through machine learning intervention and control, it directs and edits images in real time. Another work, the golden mask ‘Idiom’, detects specific features that humans cannot perceive through sensors and converts these information into specific phonemes and syntax to create its own language. The exhibition also reviews early works ‘Crystal Cave’ and ‘À Rebours’. In the caves intertwined with reality and surrealism, lifeless fur coats and reborn forms, it reflects on the traditional boundaries between humans and other entities and the meaning of reality and fiction in contemporary society.