Pierre Huyghe is a French Conceptual artist who explores philosophical notions with film and installation. Melding themes of pleasure and adventure with psychology, the artist creates situations that examine the boundary between reality and fantasy. His subject matter ranges from expeditions to Antarctica, to small-town parades, and amusement parks, as seen in one of his hallmark works The Host and The Cloud (2009–2010). Containing multiple narratives and fragmented meanings, his works conjure dreams, power, subjugation, and the search for utopia. “I have often described the art object as a hysterical thing, an object that needs the gaze of a viewer in order to live,” Huyghe has said. “The medium between an art object and a subject—a viewer—is a dynamic process, and I'm trying to maintain that as much as I can.” Born on September 11, 1962 in Paris, France, he studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Over the course of his career he has received numerous awards, including a DAAD Artist in Residence grant in Berlin, a Special Award from the Jury of the Venice Biennale in 2001, as well as the Hugo Boss Prize at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2002. Huyghe currently lives and works between Paris, France, and New York, NY. The artist’s work are held in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.