Speaking about that work, the artist said: “There is repetition, chemical reaction, reproduction, formation, and vitality; but the existence of a system is uncertain.” In other words, most of the action takes place with limited, if any, control by the artist. Growing moss is welcomed here, even encouraged. And as a matter of fact, the Paris show is itself basically “growing” on another representation – the rails and remains of the Mike Kelley exhibition that was in the gallery immediately before Huyghe’s retrospective. This self-generating world is conceived to vary in time and space, almost indifferent to human presence, past and present; and the unregulated nature of such an experiment is meant to generate unfixed narratives and “breathing” monuments actually, it all operates as the opposite of a monument, since the works, rather than representing a firm statement, are subject to continuous shifts between different resolutions, releasing and receiving in a state of permanent osmosis. Huyghe is more interested in transitions than conclusions; he ’s looking at the stops along the railroad rather than the final destination, inquiring into the dynamic chain of events rather then the epilogue. And some of these events are so temporal that they literally fade or melt away over time, like the ship made out of ice that the artist placed in the Kunsthaus Bregenz as part of his “L’Expedition Scintillante: A Musical,” in 2002.

via Pierre Huyghe at Centre Pompidou, Paris / MOUSSE CONTEMPORARY ART MAGAZINE.