PIERRE HUYGHE

NYMPHÉAS TRANSPLANT (14 – 18),

2014
 “You frame a rule, set a condition, but you cannot define how
a given entity will interact with another. I can never fully determine what
animals will do.... What I show is a set of elements and the way they
collide, confront and agree with each other. In a certain way, I
construct a play. I don’t want to exhibit something to someone any more.
I want to do the reverse: I want to exhibit someone to something.”

– Pierre Huyghe (The Art Newspaper, September 23, 2013)

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 Pierre Huyghe was born in 1962 in Paris. He studied at the
École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. The
artist lives and works in Santiago de Chile, Chile.

Huyghe was a recipient of a DAAD Artist in Residence

grant in Berlin (1999 – 2000). He received a Special Award
from the Jury of the Venice Biennale in 2001, where he
represented France. In 2002 he was awarded the Hugo
Boss Award at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York. In 2010 Huyghe received the Smithsonian
Museum’s Contemporary Artist Award, in 2013 the
Swiss Roswitha-Haftmann Award, and in 2015 the Kurt-
Schwitters Award.

In 2012 Pierre Huyghe’s garden work Untilled with its

pink-legged dog named Human was perhaps the most
critically acclaimed and most frequently photographed
contribution to dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.

Huyghe’s practice spans many media, including installation,

sculpture, film, performance, drawing, and exhibition-
making. His films probe the capacity of cinema to distort and ultimately shape memory. Using the
exhibition as a multi-faceted medium, Huyghe assembles his own works in new and nonhierarchical
ways, creating for the observer fantastic and evocative experiences that can appear dreamlike and blur
the boundaries between reality and fiction.

Huyghe has had numerous solo exhibitions, among them: Orphan Patterns, Sprengel Museum
Hannover (until April 24, 2016); Pierre Huyghe: Tarrawarra International 2015, Tarrawarra Museum of
Art, Healesville, Australia (2015); The Roof Garden Commission, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York (2015); Pierre Huyghe’s Untilled (liegender Frauenakt), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015);
Pierre Huyghe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2014), Pierre Huyghe, Museum Ludwig,
Cologne (2014); Pierre Huyghe, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013); El Dia del Ojo, Museo Tamayo Arte
Contemporáneo, México D.F. (2012); Pierre Huyghe. La saison des fêtes, Museo Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofia, Palacio de Cristal (2010); Celebration Park, Tate Modern, London and ARC, Musée
d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (both 2006); This is not a Time for Dreaming, Carpenter Center, Harvard
University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2004); One Million + Kingdoms, Modern Art Museum of Fort
Worth, Texas (2004); Streamside Day Follies, Dia Center for the Arts, New York (2003); The Hugo Boss
Prize 2002 Exhibition, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2003); L’expédition scintillante.
A musical, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz (2002), and The Third Memory, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2000).

His work is represented in the collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New
York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; SFMOMA, San
Francisco; Tate Modern, London, among other institutions worldwide.

Huyghe’s current solo exhibition Orphan Patterns at one of Germany’s most important museums, the
Sprengel Museum in Hannover, continues through April 24, 2016.

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AQUARIUM SERIES: OVERVIEW

Begun in 2010, Pierre Huyghe’s aquarium project brings together a number of important
motifs in the artist’s oeuvre, including his preoccupation with time, the figure of the
explorer (both as real and as fictional figure), and his investigation of exhibition practices.
The aquarium series can be seen as a precursor to Huyghe’s most celebrated project,
Untilled, for dOCUMENTA 13 in 2012, which blurred boundaries between human
beings and animals; art and nature.

Each unique, his aquariums are mysterious self-referential worlds. The series includes
both saltwater and fresh water aquariums, with environments that range from near
self-sustaining ecosystems to systems that require human care and maintenance.
Each comprises a distinct cast of characters—fish, hermit crabs, arrow crabs and tube
anemones for instance—some of which are creatures whose direct ancestors are more
than 500 million years old. Huyghe houses the creatures in landscapes made from
aquatic plants, red lava, volcanic rock, sand and sometimes, unnatural or unexpected
materials. Each aquarium has a distinct atmosphere, generated by the selection of
inhabitants, the formal relationships between the elements of the aquatic landscapes,
and by the lighting.

Like the scenarios in which Huyghe assembles human participants, such as the open,
improvised situations that formed the narrative of his film The Host and the Cloud
(2009–10), observers of his aquariums become witnesses to real events that take place
in a parallel world, often a world where the rules may not be immediately understood.

The worlds Huyghe creates in the aquariums are precise and concrete, but also poetic
and expansive. For instance, the volcanic rock in several saltwater aquariums can be
read as traces from the time of earth’s creation and the planet’s continuous change.
In addition, the forbidding conditions of the sparse underwater landscapes allude
to the otherworldliness of certain environments. Together with their archaic-looking
animal inhabitants, these elements function as a reminder of the vast time the earth
spent without human inhabitants. This sense of primeval time travel is leant at twist
in Zoodram 4, 5 and 6 in which casts based on the well-known Constantin Brancusi
sculpture Sleeping Muse (1910) become shelters for hermit crabs.

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AQUARIUM SERIES: COLLECTIONS

Zoodram 4 (after ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brancusi), 2011

Ishikawa Collection, Okayama, Japan

Zoodram 5 (after ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brancusi), 2011

Philadelphia Museum of Art/Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA)

Zoodram 6 (after ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brancusi), 2013

Neue Nationalgalerie, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz

Untitled (Floating and Non-Floating Rock), 2013

Alex Marshall Fine Art, USA

Untitled (Floating Rock Centre Pompidou), 2013

Collection of Kristopher Hinson, USA

Untitled (Made Ecosystem Centre Pompidou), 2013.

Collection Elisa Nuyten and David Dime, Canada

Untitled (Vertical Floating Rock), 2014.

Le Chalet Los Angeles, USA

Cambrian Explosion (L.A.), 2014

Arario Collection, Korea

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NYMPHÉAS TRANSPLANT (14 – 18), 2014

Unlike the fictional and foreboding environments of his saltwater aquariums, Huyghe’s
fresh water Nymphéas Transplant aquariums (currently three versions exist) are based
on the nymphéas (French for “water lily”) pond ecosystems of Claude Monet’s gardens
in Giverny, France, incorporating plants, fish, amphibians, crustaceans and insects
typically found in the ponds. Huyghe interpreted the climatic data of Giverny from
a given date or time period to design a lighting program for the aquarium, as evident
in the title Nymphéas Transplant (14 – 18), which refers to the years of 1914 to 1918.
These years encompass World War I, as well as the creation of Monet’s famous Water
Lilies panoramic installation for the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.

Nymphéas Transplant (14 – 18) is the largest of Huyghe’s three nymphéas aquariums.

The water has a slight greenish colour, an effect of the ecosystem. The glass panels of
the aquarium tank are fabricated from “smart glass,” a type of glass than can change
from translucent to transparent according to voltage, light or heat. The tank sits on
a concrete base. A light box is suspended over the tank, which is controlled by a
DMX system. The light box is programmed for eight hours of viewing time (a program
abstracted from the climatic data of Giverny 1914 – 1918), followed by eight hours
of specialized light to sustain the ecosystem during which time the aquarium glass is
opaque. This is followed by eight hours of darkness to create a circadian rhythm for the
animals. The timing of these periods is flexible and does not need to correspond to the
actual external conditions of the location where it is installed.

The aquatic plants inside the aquarium were procured from the gardens of Latour-
Marliac from where Claude Monet originally bought his water lilies. Created in 1870,
Latour-Marliac’s gardens are devoted entirely to different species of aquatic plants,
particularly the water lily. The aquarium also contains a plant, water lily, stone and
microorganisms from Monet’s actual ponds in Giverny.

Monet, who lived at Giverny from 1883 until his death in 1926, explored the motif of the
water lily in over 250 paintings. First exhibited in Paris in 1909, Monet’s water lilies were
at first well received but subsequently became less appreciated by his contemporaries.
By the time Water Lilies opened at the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Jardins des Tuileries
in Paris in 1927, his work had fallen out of favour. It was not until the late 1940s and
early 1950s that interest in Monet and his water lilies was revived in avant-garde circles.
In 1952 French modernist artist André Masson described the Orangerie as the “Sistine
chapel of Impressionism.” Monet’s work became seen as a precursor to Abstract
Expressionism and Arte Informale movements, and in 1955 The Museum of Modern
Art in New York acquired the famous mural-sized water lilies triptych.

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Above: Claude Monet at Giverny, France (1883 – 1926)
Middle: Exhibition view: Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1890 – 1926, Musée de l´Orangerie, Paris
Below: Detail of Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1890 – 1926, Musée de l´Orangerie, Paris

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NYMPHÉAS TRANSPLANT (14 – 18), 2014

Live pond ecosystem, fresh water, glass tank, filtration system, lighting system, concrete base
Overall size: 193 x 143 x 128 cm, Tank size: 163 x 143 x 128 cm

ANIMALS

– 15 Ides fish (Leuciscus idus)

– 4 Axolotls newts (Ambystoma Mexicanum)
– Insects in an undetermined number:
· Great Diving Beetle (Dypticus Marginalis)
· Water Boat Man (Notonecta Glauca)
· Water Beetle (Hydrobius Fuscipes)
· Water Scorpion (Nea Cinerea)

– Crustaceans in an undetermined number:

· Freshwater amphipod (Gammarus Roeselii)
· Water Skater (Asellus Aquaticus)
· Fairy Shrimp (Chirocephalus Diaphanus)
· Copepod (Cyclopse)

Axolotls

Water Scorpion
Ides fish

PLANTS

– 5 Water Lilies:
· 1 nymphaea Mexicana
· 1 nymphaea Laydekeri Rosea
· 3 nymphaea Atropurpurea
– Other aquatic plants in an undetermined number:
· Ceratophillum Submersum
· Lemna Minor
· Myriophyllum Aquaticum Water Lily

CARE AND MAINTENANCE

A feeding and maintenance manual will be provided.

A studio-approved local aquarium company must be hired
to undertake regular maintenance and cleaning.

EXHIBITION HISTORY
GLOBALE: Reset Modernity!, ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie,
Karlsruhe, Germany (April 16 – August 21, 2016)

Pierre Huyghe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

Los Angeles (November 23, 2014 – February 22, 2015)

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Details: Nymphéas Transplant (14 –18), 2014
Live pond ecosystem, lightbox, switchable glass, concrete
Overall: 193 x 143 x 128 cm
Tank: 163 x 143 x 128 cm
Edition of 3
(PH 118)

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Details: Nymphéas Transplant (14 –18), 2014
Live pond ecosystem, lightbox, switchable glass, concrete
Overall: 193 x 143 x 128 cm
Tank: 163 x 143 x 128 cm
Edition of 3
(PH 118)

10
Details: Nymphéas Transplant (14 –18), 2014
Live pond ecosystem, lightbox, switchable glass, concrete
Overall: 193 x 143 x 128 cm
Tank: 163 x 143 x 128 cm
Edition of 3
(PH 118)

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LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART / LACMA, LOS ANGELES, 2014
PIERRE HUYGHE, NYMPHÉAS TRANSPLANT (14 –18), 2014

Exhibition view: Pierre Huyghe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art / LACMA, Los Angeles, 2014
Front: Nymphéas Transplant (14 –18), 2014
Rear: Human
Above: Atari Light, 1999

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Exhibition view: Pierre Huyghe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art / LACMA, Los Angeles, 2014
Above (from left to right): Players (The Host and the Cloud 2009 – 2010), 2010, Nymphéas Transplant (14 –18), 2014
Untitled (Human Mask), 2014
Below (from left to right): Extended Holidays, 1999, L’Écrivain Public, 1995, Nymphéas Transplant (14 –18), 2014
Le Procès du temps libre, 1999, Atari Light, 1999 (ceiling)

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AQUARIUM SERIES: OVERVIEW & EXHIBITION HISTORY

Zoodram 1, 2010

Prototype

Zoodram 2, 2010

Prototype

Zoodram 3, 2010

Prototype

Zoodram 4 (after ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brancusi), 2011

Ishikawa Collection, Okayama, Japan

Pierre Huyghe, Museum Ludwig,

Cologne (11 April, 2014 – 13 July, 2014)
Pierre Huyghe, Centre Pompidou,
Paris (September 25, 2013 – January 6, 2014)
Yes Naturally, how art saves the world, Gemeentemuseum,
The Hague (March 16 – September 1, 2013)

Zoodram 5 (after ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brancusi), 2011

Collection of Philadelphia Museum of Art/Los Angeles Museum of Art
(LACMA)

Pierre Huyghe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

Los Angeles (LACMA) (November 23, 2014 – February 22, 2015)
EXPO 1: New York, MoMA PS1,
New York (May 12 – September 2, 2013)

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Zoodram 6 (after ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brancusi), 2013
Collection of Neue Nationalgalerie, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Berlin

Untitled (Floating and Non-Floating Rock), 2013

Collection of Alex Marshall Fine Art, USA

Untitled (Floating Rock 2), 2013

Untitled (Floating Rock Centre Pompidou), 2013

Collection of Kristopher Hinson, USA

Pierre Huyghe, Museum Ludwig,

Cologne (11 April 2014 – 13 July 2014)
Pierre Huyghe, Centre Pompidou,
Paris (September 25, 2013 – January 6, 2014)

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 Untitled (Made Ecosystem Centre Pompidou), 2013
Collection Elisa Nuyten and David Dime, Canada

Pierre Huyghe, Museum Ludwig,

Cologne (11 April 2014 – 13 July 2014)
Pierre Huyghe, Centre Pompidou,
Paris (September 25, 2013 – January 6, 2014)

Untitled (Vertical Floating Rock), 2014

Collection of Le Chalet, USA

Cambrian Explosion (L.A.), 2014

Arario Collection, Korea

Pierre Huyghe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

Los Angeles (LACMA) (November 23, 2014 – February 22, 2015)

Nymphéas Transplant (14 –18), 2014

Pierre Huyghe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

Los Angeles (LACMA) (November 23, 2014 – February 22, 2015)

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Nymphéas Transplant (Fall 1917), 2014

Nymphéas Transplant (12.21.1914), 2014

Cambrian Pulse, 2015

The Roof Garden Commission: Pierre Huyghe, The Metropolitan

Museum of Art, New York (May 12 – November 1, 2015)

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ZOODRAM 1

Zoodram 1, 2010
Aquarium, stone, sand, livestock, lighting
101,6 x 88,9 x 76,2 cm
(PH 053)

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ZOODRAM 2

Zoodram 2, 2010
Aquarium, stone, sand, livestock, lighting
134,6 x 99,1 x 81,3 cm
(PH 054)

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ZOODRAM 3

Zoodram 3, 2010
Aquarium, stone, sand, livestock, lighting
172,7 x 101,6 x 81,3 cm
(PH 055)

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CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS
PIERRE HUYGHE, 2014
ZOODRAM 4 (AFTER ‘SLEEPING MUSE’ BY CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI), 2011

Zoodram 4 (after ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brancusi), 2011

Aquarium, hermit crab, cast of Constantin Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse (1910), red lava rocks, arrow crabs
Glass tank: 134,6 x 99,1 x 76,2 cm
Base: 134,6 x 99,1 x 73,7 cm
Lightbox: 121,92 x 86,36 x 22,86 cm
2,5 cm gap between top of tank and suspended light
(PH 069)
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ZOODRAM 5 (AFTER ‘SLEEPING MUSE’ BY CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI), 2011

Zoodram 5 (after ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brancusi), 2011

Aquarium, hermit crab, cast of Constantin Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse (1910), red lava rocks, arrow crabs

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ZOODRAM 6 (AFTER ‘SLEEPING MUSE’ BY CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI), 2013

Zoodram 6 (after ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brancusi), 2013

Sketch
(PH 086)

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UNTITLED (FLOATING AND NON FLOATING ROCK), 2013

Untitled (Floating and non floating rock), 2013

Aquarium, salt water, volcanic rocks, dark grey sand, arrow crabs, horseshoe crabs
Glass tank: 54 x 68 x 68 cm
Base: 76 x 75 x 75 cm
Lightbox: 7 x 64 x 64 cm
(PH 085)

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UNTITLED (FLOATING ROCK 2), 2013

Untitled (Floating Rock 2), 2013

Aquarium, salt water, volcanic rock, sand, horseshoe crabs, arrow crabs
Glass tank: 54 x 62 x 62 cm
Base: 76,5 x 69 x 69 cm
Lightbox: 7 x 56 x 56 cm
(PH 088)

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CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS
PIERRE HUYGHE, 2014
UNTITLED (FLOATING ROCK POMPIDOU), 2013

Untitled (Floating Rock Pompidou), 2013

Aquarium, salt water, volcanic rock, sand, horseshoe crabs, arrow crabs, tube anemone
Glass tank: 76,2 x 101,6 x 88,9 cm
Base: 71,2 x 111,7 x 99 cm
Lightbox: 10,5 x 88,7 x 76 cm
(PH 098)

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UNTITLED (MADE ECOSYSTEM CENTRE POMPIDOU), 2013

Untitled (Made Ecosystem Centre Pompidou), 2013

Aquarium, fresh water, granite rocks, fishes
Glas tank: 90 x 66 x 62 cm
Base: 75 x 69 x 65 m
(PH 107)

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LE CHALET LOS ANGELES, 2014

UNTITLED (VERTICAL FLOATING ROCK), 2014

Untitled (Vertical Floating Rock), 2014

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LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART, LOS ANGELES (LACMA)
PIERRE HUYGHE, 2015
CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION (L.A.), 2014

Cambrian Explosion (L.A.), 2014

Aquarium, salt water, volcanic rock, sand, horseshoe crabs, arrow crabs, tube anemone
Glass tank: approx. 110 x 200 x 150 cm
Base: approx. 75 x 210 x 160 cm
(PH 114)
Left side in the back: Shore, 2013 (PH 101)
Back: L’Expédition scintillante, Act I (Weather Score), 2002 (PH 078)
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NYMPHÉAS TRANSPLANT (14 –18), 2014

Nymphéas Transplant (14 –18), 2014

Live pond ecosystem, lightbox, switchable glass, concrete
189 x 143,5 x 128,7 cm
Edition of 2
(PH 118)

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NYMPHÉAS TRANSPLANT (FALL 1917), 2014

Nymphéas Transplant (Fall 1917), 2014

Live pond ecosystem, light box, switchable glass, concrete
189,5 x 138,5 x 103,7 cm
Edition of 2
(PH 119)

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NYMPHÉAS TRANSPLANT (12.21.1914), 2014

Nymphéas Transplant (12.21.1914), 2014

Live pond ecosystem, light box, switchable glass, concrete
189,5 x 113,5 x 103,5 cm
Edition of 2
(PH 116)

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THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK
THE ROOF GARDEN COMMISSION: PIERRE HUYGHE, 2015
CAMBRIAN PULSE, 2015

Cambrian Pulse, 2015

Aquarium, water, vulcanic rock, sand, switchable glass, Tadpole shrimp (Triops cancriformis),
American brook lampreys (Lethenteron appendix)
Glass tank: 103 x 153,5 x 203,5 cm
Base: 75 x 153,5 x 203,5 cm
Edition of 2
(PH 134)
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