Taipei Travel

Five blind Mexican tetras swim at ease among the artificial caves in an aquarium, coexisting harmoniously as enduring inhabitants of Winsing Art Place since its founding in 2019. Five years have passed and the sculpted rocks in the tank have gone from bare to being covered in red algae, so the fish no longer need additional feeding. This work has transformed into a self-sustaining ecosystem capable of maintaining its own balance after synchronizing with Taiwan’s natural day-night rhythmicity. Would the fish evolve under these different circadian rhythms? By posing this question, French artist Pierre Huyghe investigates the dynamic relationship between organisms and their environments, inviting us to reflect on our own ways of life.

Interactions between humans and non-humans play a crucial role in Huyghe’s work. Whether animals, plants, or neural networks, these elements possess the ability to learn, adapt, and evolve. “Usually, we think of an exhibition as an endpoint, a resolution of something. The exhibition is not the end of a process but a continuously changing ritual—the starting point to an elsewhere,” said the artist. He sees art not as a static display but as an experience that continuously evolves. Art is more than a presentation in his practice and exhibitions. It gravitates toward a process that engages the audience, prompting them to ponder and actively participate.

In the current exhibition at Winsing Art Place, following its showcase at the Punta della Dogana in Venice, Camata is a video piece capturing a skeleton in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Controlled in real-time by machine learning, the work autonomously directs and edits itself. Another piece, Idiom, features a golden mask that uses sensors to detect imperceptible human traits and further translates this data into specific phonemes and syntax to create its own unique language. The exhibition also revisits earlier works, Crystal Cave and Á Rebours, where a cave, lifeless fur coat, and forms of rebirth interweave between the real and surreal. Here, Huyghe explores conventional boundaries between humans and other entities. These intersections beckon reflections on the meaning of truth and fiction in contemporary society.

Born in 1962 in Paris, France, Pierre Huyghe creates art that spans diverse media, including film, site-specific works, sculpture, and situations. His works are conceived as speculative fiction and often present themselves as continuity between a wide range of intelligent forms, biological, technological, tangible inert matter that learn, modify and evolve. Huyghe has held solo exhibitions at major international art institutions, such as the Punta della Dogana in Venice, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Tate Modern in London. He is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including the Hugo Boss Prize in 2002 and the Nasher Prize for sculptures in 2017.