French artist Pierre Huyghe’s practice ranges from sculpture and video to experimental “scenarios” involving plants, animals, and insects. Huyghe explores the boundary between reality and fiction, stating in interviews that, to him, representation has become more important than real events. Video works like Untitled (Human Mask), 2014, in Glenstone’s collection, have the unscripted feel of documentary. The piece depicts a macaque wearing a wig and white mask as it explores an abandoned restaurant on a deserted street near Fukushima, Japan, in the wake of the 2011 nuclear disaster. Huyghe, however, is not a documentarian, stating, “I provide a framework, and then I let the framework go and things happen within the framework that are subject to chance, to interaction. These things are beyond my control.”

–Carly Davis, from the Glenstone Field Guide