Not every hermit crab gets to live inside a shell that replicates a Brancusi mask. But one does, and he (she?) is a prime example of why Pierre Huyghe (pronounced “hweeg”) will receive the second annual Nasher Prize—a $100,000 award that promotes contemporary sculpture on a global stage—on April 1. “Sculpture has evolved dramatically. It includes many different practices and ways of making, and conceiving, art,” explains Jeremy Strick, director of Dallas’ Nasher Sculpture Center. “Pierre’s works represent that change in that they encompass many different elements.” Among them: An active beehive enveloping the head of a reclining figure in a park, with the artist’s white Ibizan hound—one foreleg painted neon pink—wandering nearby; a forest of living trees onstage at the Sydney Opera House; a film of Huyghe’s Antarctic expedition, with orchestral accompaniment, projected over a rink of smoking black ice in New York’s Central Park. “Pierre is interested in living systems and allowing them to evolve and change, not under his direction,” notes Strick. “He really makes you think about sculpture in a different way.”
