L'Ellipse

1998

Triple projection, 16mm film

13min.

Pierre Huyghe has focused on deconstructing narratives and the images underpinning them since the late 1990s. In L'Ellipse, he plays with the grammar of cinema. Three scenes consecutively unfold on three screens. Two are from Wim Wenders' film The American Friend. The one in the centre is the artist's work, where the same actor is shot in the same locations.

Huyghe presents a narrative hypothesis: his film serves as a bridge between the German director’s scenes. It suggests the relationships between the time of the fiction and the present of the exhibition. This work is rooted in the artist’s broader reflections on the passing of time.

Huyghe's video installation L'Ellipse is in the Pinault Collection. It was presented for the first time during the 2008 “Passage du temps” (“Passage of Time”) show at the Tri Postal in Lille.
Exhibitions