At Fondation Beyeler the first major solo exhibition in Switzerland dedicated to Pierre Huyghe

The Fondation Beyeler in Basel is hosting the first major solo exhibition in Switzerland dedicated to Pierre Huyghe, among the most innovative artists on the international contemporary scene. Designed specifically for the museum’s spaces, the exhibition brings together new productions, recent films and some key works from recent years, aiming to offer a full immersion in the French artist’s research. The exhibition, open to the public from May 24 to Sept. 13, 2026, is curated by Mouna Mekouar and Anne Stenne, with Charlotte Sarrazin and Paola Ravagni directing the project.

Already the protagonist of major international events such as Documenta 13 and Skulptur Projekte Münster, the artist conceives of his exhibitions as “speculative fictions,” worlds in which technology, living organisms and inanimate matter constantly coexist and transform. His works are “dynamic situations,” shaped by time, unpredictability and interaction with the environment.

At Fondation Beyeler, the exhibition takes the form of an immersive, site-specific experience. Works and spaces intertwine in a suspended and ambiguous dimension, where moving images, sounds, living beings, objects and machine learning systems coexist in unstable balance. Marking the rhythm of the entire path is Apnea (2026), a kind of artificial organ immersed in water that breathes with a human rhythm, spreading sound vibrations and perceptible movements throughout the exhibition space.

The theme of breath also returns in Alchemy (2026), an installation in which a worm, imagined as a primordial figure of the human unconscious, emits sounds and vibrations that seem to pass through the surrounding matter. In both works, breath becomes a physical and symbolic element, capable of shaping the visitor’s sensory experience and opening a confrontation with the unknown.

This atmosphere is amplified with Liminals (2025), Huyghe’s latest film, conceived as a kind of contemporary myth. The film follows a faceless humanoid figure who emerges from shifting states and attempts to exist in a dimension outside of time and space. The artist describes this universe as a “threshold state,” where reality, imagination and transformation coexist simultaneously. The boundaries between body, environment and perception dissolve, leaving room for multiple possibilities of existence.

Also appearing in the exhibition is Adversary (2026), a large closed gate that functions as a symbolic threshold between the visible and what remains hidden. The work presents itself at once as a mental image and an access to a possible elsewhere. In Camata (2024), on the other hand, a group of machines seems to enact a mysterious ritual around a skeleton found in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The film is continuously reassembled in real time by sensors installed in space, resulting in a constantly changing narrative.

The exhibition environment also becomes an integral part of the work. In Keeper of Time (2026) layers of matter and paint accumulate on surfaces, while Dust of Light (2026) spreads through the space in the form of colored dust, light games and projections that transform light and time into tangible elements.

In Huyghe’s work, the works stop being isolated entities and become open organisms, constantly relating to each other. Images, sounds, movements and presences intertwine, generating ever-changing narratives. The Fondation Beyeler exhibition aims to invite the public to enter a true “landscape of the soul,” a universe of overlapping temporalities, voices and shifting perceptual states. Through an approach that is both sensory and introspective, Pierre Huyghe continues his reflection on the boundaries between reality and fiction, human and artificial, living and nonliving. His works open up the possibility of imagining new dimensions of reality and new ways of perceiving the world.

At Fondation Beyeler the first major solo exhibition in Switzerland dedicated to Pierre Huyghe

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