Pétrole, Fabrice Hyber´s first exhibition at the gallery at the start of 2006, only featured paintings on canvas and on paper. For this second personal exhibition, the artist now conversely offers us a representative panorama of his whole multiform creative work.

Pure Hyber… due to the variety of mediums used. Therefore, first of all, drawings (at the source of all his works), paintings; then objects that emerge from the paintings, therefore new concepts of Pof, objects / sculptures which in turn result in videos. This process used to prepare the exhibition is translated literally from the cycle which the artist used to bring his pof to life. It is a perfect illustration of Hyber´s artistic and intellectual approach, where any work/any action is just an intermediate, progressive stage in this gigantic and never-ending “work in process” conceived in the form of a huge rhizome, reflecting the structuring and proliferation his thought: no matter what the materiality of the work, what counts is its capacity to trigger different behaviours.
To achieve the panorama is a new Peinture homéopathique (Homeopathic Painting). In fact, any great work phase on a theme always concludes with Hyber creating one of these great synthesis works, a sort of story-board featuring all the ideas, drawings and elements gathered by the artist on a specific theme.

Pure Hyber... as this exhibition considers the “bio”, the organic, the ecological, a subject that is particularly dear to the artist. If green has naturally stood out in Fabrice Hyber´s work as his favourite colour ever since his first exhibition in 1986, it is because nature, the organic and ecological (in a progressive vision of these subjects), plants and trees have always fascinated this farmer´s son brought up in Vendée.
All the exhibited paintings are highly worked compositions, laden with components, and they form very complex canvases, reflecting the image of nature. Nature does not leave emptiness, neither does man. I have therefore imagined a multitude of animal-plants, plants that are nearly human, like the results of a mutation, or mutations. Ecology must not make us take a step backwards, or even, as it does too often, mark time.

To better understand how this new exhibition is “pure Hyber” and is part of a perennial, global artistic approach, here is a small overview of Fabrice Hyber’s nature-focused projects.

The POF (Prototypes for Functional Objects): concept invented by Fabrice Hyber to designate active objects, coming out of our daily life, and diverted from their original function : le Ballon carré (Square Ball), l’Escalier sans fin (Endless Stairs)…
1991 – L’Assureur (The Insurer) – pof n° 111 : 1st work using a tree. It is a tree with a board on top of it; the shocked tree twists, foils the board and differently continues growing.
Since 1991 all lot more have been created: Bonzaï à la française (French-style Bonsai) – pof n° 130, Arbre à une feuille (Tree with One Leaf) – pof n° 58, Arbre peint (Painted Tree) – pof n° 108

The Valley, since 1995
Where I lived, in Vendée, there used to be huge forests, but Napoleon had them felled to the ground. Only Marval forest remained. The land dried out and the countryside changed dramatically. I wanted to rediscover this forest and all its trees. I want to reconstruct this landscape that I have dreamed about since I was a child. So, for more than 10 years, with the help of my father who is a real expert on forestry, I have created an ideal forest over one hundred hectares: fruit trees, oaks, tropical essences, rare trees, etc. The seeds are not planted, I prefer to sow them, it is the method that is the least traumatic for the plant and the earth, and it is also the way you learn the most! And it doesn’t matter if it takes so long. That’s life! In 2010, local school children will come to this valley as part of the Agriculture and Culture project set up by the artist.

Graines de Spar (Spar Seeds), 1999
Work designed for the chain Spar of local grocery stores (150 shops throughout France, except in Paris) and with 190,000 copies published. The artist decorated a lucky bag with three drawings reproducing three of his projects. The first: a shower of seeds and acorns entitled Semer la forêt pour l’an 2000 (Sow the Forest for the Year 2000), the second, Fan-club des arbres fruitiers dans les villes (Fan-club of Fruit Trees in Towns), and the last drawing is that of the silver birches around the Arc de Triomphe. The “magnetized seeds” are to be attached to a metallic stand.

CCAC Institute, San Francisco, 1999 : Hyber launched the Mouvement de Libération des Bonzaïs (Bonsai Liberation Movement) by inviting the general public, after he had done so himself, to plant his small trees right in the earth, in the museum courtyard.



Inconnu.net, 2000 (Unknown.net, 2000) : Fabrice Hyber made the Arc de Triomphe the physical metaphor for an online knowledge portal. The concentric structure of the Place de l’Etoile is ideal for evoking the radiance of the “world cobweb”. The monument housing the Unknown Soldier is seen as a huge question mark. A hundred or so trees circling the Arc perfectly depict this idea of representing knowledge with many ramifications. The artist chose silver birches as a tree species, thus evoking the climatic warming which is gradually changing the temperature climate of our regions into a far harsher one.

Le Printemps de Cahors, 2000 : A political manifesto for trees: Hyber had 200 fruit trees planted in the town, and placed before each of them a ceramic tile stating their blossom and harvesting times.
“The flowers, the fruits, then the leaves that fall: is there a more beautiful way to set the rhythm of life in town? Also, decorative trees of our towns are there as images while fruit trees provide information.”
He then used the fruits to make confiture de ville n° 1 (Town Jam No 1) (quinces and blackberries – poetic evocation of the town’s walls and nooks), then confiture de ville n° 2 (almonds and prunes), delivered individually to each addressee by Eliane Pine Carringhton transformed for the occasion into a traffic warden.

Les Culbutos (The “Weebles”), Nogent-sur-Marne, 2006 / Les Culbutos, project for the Nantes estuary, 2007 : The Culbutos are the result of a “gardening experience” undertaken by the artist, who has always been fascinated by the culture and by that of trees in particular, either in the French style, where the tree/plant is pruned, or in the Japanese style, where the tree/plant is worked.
With the Culbuto, the tree itself moves, thus the soil also moves: the tree is going to change position according to the Culbuto… In the estuary project, the Culbuto is a boat that floats, in which the tree is planted.



M.I.T. Man, homme nourrit (M.I.T. Man, fed man) / Matière à penser / Food for thought Exhibition,
Le Laboratoire, Paris, October 19, 2007 – January 14, 2008
To open Le Laboratoire, a place dedicated to art linked with science, Fabrice Hyber designed an exhibition that was the result of his conversations with Robert Langer, Professor at the M.I.T. (Massachussets Institute of Technology), on the subject of the stem cells.
In the centre of the exhibition, the archimboldesque sculpture of the M.I.T. Man, homme nourrit, made out of fruits, pulses and seeds, in direct relationship with the nutrition needed to reproduce cells.

Seed and Grow (Je s’aime) Exhibition / Watari-Um Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, April 25 – August 30, 2008 : “I will seed ideas as I have seeded the forest.” “Art comes from thought, from the seed of thought, forests comes from seeds sown in the earth.” In a nature-orientated country such as Japan, where the cherry blossom is celebrated each spring by a week of national festivities, Fabrice Hyber designed his exhibition in the form of market gardens installed on the top floor of the museum and throughout the town.

And above all the “pure Hyber” colour… the green colour
“In 1986, for my first exhibition, Mutation, I told myself that my only communication tool - books, brochures, catalogues, cartons, etc. - would be green, not a single green, rather a range, a sort of green ray. A green that also recalls nature and ecology, even if my green is not the same shade as the ecologists’one. Theirs has a nearly reactionary, anti-mutation side, which is contrary to everything that drives me. So, I have taken their green, I have made it artificial and then made it my logo. It is a brilliant green that does not exist in nature, except in spring when everything begins to grow and that unleashed energy is felt everywhere."

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