Pierre Huyghe and the work series landscape at Fondation Beyeler

From the AD HOC NEWS Art Desk » Work Series & Retrospective Desk - The editors cover exhibitions, auctions, collections, prizes and artistic positions. Published: August 22, 2026 · Last checked: August 22, 2026, 10:53 AM

Pierre Huyghe has built an oeuvre in which living organisms, technological systems and fictional worlds coexist as uncertain environments. His expansive presentation at Fondation Beyeler and the commission Liminals with LAS Art Foundation and Hartwig Art Foundation underline how his work series now interlock across institutions and media.

The large-scale environments

At Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel, the museum presents a major exhibition dedicated to Pierre Huyghe, bringing together newly created works and key pieces from recent years, framed as dynamic situations rather than static displays. The museum describes the show as exclusively conceived for its architecture, with multiple works forming a polyphonic landscape of living and artificial entities.

The exhibition extends outwards through public programs that approach his installations as speculative environments, including workshops on speculative drawing and writing that explicitly reference how his practice dissolves the boundary between nature and technology. For many visitors, this setting makes his work series legible as a continuous experiment in how systems perceive, evolve and communicate beyond human-centered narratives.

Liminals and quantum uncertainty

Parallel to the museum presentation, Pierre Huyghe has developed the large-scale environment Liminals, commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and Hartwig Art Foundation, which debuted at Halle am Berghain in Berlin and now forms part of his wider institutional trajectory. The commission explores uncertainty through conversations with quantum physicist Tommaso Calarco, using the logic and outputs of quantum systems as raw material for sound, moving images and light.

Hartwig Art Foundation describes Liminals as an environment in which film, vibration, dust and light compose a cosmos of indeterminacy, made to embody states where multiple possibilities coexist before collapsing into a single percept. In an accompanying statement, Huyghe characterizes the work as a ‘soulscape’ that follows an inexistent being across ambiguous states of being, living or existing, staging empathy with the impossible as a way to relate to chaos.

The work core across series

Pierre Huyghe’s practice spans film, installation, performance, sculpture and systems that integrate living organisms, frequently arranged as environments that evolve over time rather than fixed works. Over the past decade he has repeatedly worked with machine learning and neuroimaging, notably in projects such as UUmwelt at MoMA’s sculpture garden, where algorithmically reconstructed mental images appear on freestanding screens.

Key recurring work groups include environments populated by non-human agents, narrative installations in which exhibition spaces become fictional sites, and long-term projects where biological growth and technological feedback loops intertwine. The large-scale environment Liminals and the Fondation Beyeler exhibition both extend this focus, situating viewers as observers within open-ended systems rather than as spectators of discrete art objects.

The current state of the work

Against this backdrop, Pierre Huyghe’s current institutional projects consolidate his trajectory toward immersive environments and quantum-informed speculation, while his commissioned work Liminals and the ongoing museum presentation position him firmly at the intersection of technological research and experimental exhibition-making.

This article was produced with a.i. support and editorially reviewed. All statements without guarantee; auction results, exhibition dates and awards may change at short notice.