“The Roof Garden Commission: Pierre Huyghe”

Pierre Huyghe, a French artist know for poetic projects that encompass video, sculpture and landscaping, has transformed the Met’s rooftop into a mystical, Huy installation—a kind of archaeological excavation of that metaphorical place where the interaction between culture and nature makes the natural world seem unnatural. Segments of the roof’s paving stones have been pried off, stacked to the side like lids from freshly exhumed sarcophagi. Nearby, a large aquarium features a boulder inexplicably floating in a tableaux that periodically assumes a milky opacity, as if someone suddenly flipped a switch to hide the scene. The piece goes back and forth like that, alternately obscuring and revealing the contents within—an enigmatic, even unsettling, reminder that all is not what it seems.