One of my favourite artists, Pierre Huyghe, is having a monographic show in France called Celebration Park.
It’s Ann Lee who introduced me to Huyghe’s work a few years ago. Ann Lee is a Manga character the artist purchased together with Philippe Parreno. They acquired the copyright for her original image from a Japanese agency which develops figures for cartoons, comic strips, advertising and video games. Because she was so simply drawn, they got her on the cheap. And because Ann had no particular qualities, she was never meant to survive her adventures. Rather than throwing the poor girl into some bloody adventure, they offered her up to other artists for the No Ghost Just a Shell project, where she became the source for paintings, books, videos, etc.
Celebration Park, which foreshadows a park that the artist anticipates to ultimately construct, features installations, dancing doors, urban neons and movies.
Around the exhibition space are the Gates, gigantic doors piloted by an independent program and inspired by the evolution of two dancers whose choreographed movements have been transcribed using the technique of 3D animation (apparently they were taking a nap when i was there.)
This is not a time for dreaming is the most beautiful film i’ve seen this year. The puppet musical tells the story of Le Corbusier‘s struggle to satisfy a commission from Harvard University to build the the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts and Huyghe’s similar experience at the same institution. The film is incredibly sweet, uncanny, fantastical and concerned about the value of art.
In another room, A Journey that wasn’t is based on two events :
In February 2005, Pierre Huyghe departed for Antarctica in search of an unknown island that recently appeared following the climatic warming, the merging of the ices. This exploratory voyage in an unmapped zone was transformed last October into a musical comedy shooted on the ice skating rink of Central Park.
An adjacent room contains Terra Incognita / Isla Ociosidad, an aluminium pavilion/island contrived by the artist in close collaboration with François Roche, proposing to traverse this structure in creating “another” formula of projection.
Huyghe references different cultural forms in this exhibition including puppet shows, community celebrations and natural history films, in order to investigate the relationship between art and society.
Pierre Huyghe – Celebration Park, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, until May 14.
If you’re in London this Summer, Celebration Park will be at the Tate gallery, 5 July – 17 September 2006.
Images on flickr. More info in fluctuat, e-flux and DB artmag.