On Monday evening, just prior to the airing of the first 2016 Presidential Debate, a devoted arts audience comprised of collectors, professionals, and media arrived at The Warehouse for the announcement of the 2017 Nasher Prize Laureate. A best-kept secret, a serendipitous clue in the form of a sculpture by Pierre Huyghe reclined at the entrance. Within The Rachofsky Collection, the much-admired and truly fine example of Huyghe?s work entitled La d?raison?has been on display for months as part of the Identity Revisited exhibition. A fitting coincidence, the sculpture secretly declared that Huyghe, a French artist living and working in Chile and New York, would be the recipient of the $100,000 Nasher Prize.
Designated the ?most ambitious international award in sculpture? the Nasher Prize honors a living artist who furthers the understanding of sculpture and its breadth. Incorporating time-based elements?fog, ice, parades, rituals, automata, computer programs, video games, dogs, bees, and microorganisms?Pierre Huyghe?s use of varied materials and disciplines combine to bring together the unconventional. His practice connects music, cinema, dance and theater with biology and philosophy.
?Pierre Huyghe?s practice is so varied and dynamic?employing nature, animals, and often human participation?that he changes the ways we might think of the exhibition space and the art object, as well as the bodies that experience them,? said Nasher Sculpture Center?s Director Jeremy Strick, adding, ?The questions that the work poses about time and physical materials? relationship to it are ones that are at the heart of international discussions related to contemporary sculpture, and looking to his work helps to better determine the ways the art form?sometimes quite literally?continues to grow and evolve.?
Selected by an esteemed and informed international jury?of museum directors, curators, artists and art historians, Pierre Huyghe commented, ?I?m looking at the co-evolution of interdependent agents, biotic and abiotic, real or symbolic?different states of living, self-organizing in a dynamic and unstable situation: mesh, porous, contingent. It could be immaterial things such as time, light, temperature, air, scents, but interconnected within a network of material systems in order to generate a particular and sensible experience.?
A ceremony for the artist will take place April 1, 2017 at Nasher Sculpture Center. ?His expansive view of sculpture so wonderfully embodies the goal of the Nasher Prize, which it to champion the greatest artistic minds of our time,? said Strick.
Founding Partners of the Nasher Prize are The Eugene McDermott Foundation and Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger. In conjunction with the Nasher Prize, the Nasher Sculpture Center annually presents a series of public programs exploring the climate of contemporary sculpture. This year, the Nasher Prize Dialogues?will occur in Berlin, Mexico City, and Dallas. Interdisciplinary luminaries such as artist Bettina Pousttchi, writer J?rg Heiser, and curator Kasper K?nig will summit to discuss the most compelling topics regarding contemporary sculpture. The Nasher Prize is generously co-chaired by Deedie Rose and Sharon Young. The Nasher Prize presenting sponsor is JPMorgan Chase & Co. For more information visit: nashersculpturecenter.org