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The activity and artistic thought of Fabrice Hyber, who defines himself as a quantum artist, are constantly traversed by the notions of mutation and transformation. Trained in science before entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, the artist designs his work in the form of a gigantic rhizome that develops on the principle of echoes. Invariably starting from the practice of drawing and painting, he invests all modes of expression and constantly diffuses his work from one medium to another: "No matter the materiality of the work, only its ability to trigger behaviors.    

 

We see in his canvases cellular forms, trees with multiple ramifications, hybrid beings, arrows suggesting infinite recycling. Fascinated by the viral mode of operation, Fabrice Hyber, from the 1980s, preluded our mode of communication in networks - for the transition to the year 2000, he was entrusted with the Arc de Triomphe where he launched the site "  unknown.net , the Encyclopedia of the Unknown »  “Each of your questions will lead to another. This tree structure will lead us all in the same direction: towards the unknown.”     

 

Interferences, interactions, influences on behaviors...are at the heart of his approach. His way of proceeding with variable geometry is enriched each time by a dialogue with multiple disciplines (from physics to neurosciences, from astronomy to herbal medicine, etc.) to refer the spectator/actor to a larger project. Thus, whether it is "L'Hybermarché"  at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, or of "Eau d'or, Eau dort, ODOR, a television studio for which he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1997 or of "Chaosgraphie"  of the "4 Seasons..."  by Vivaldi with Angelin Preljocaj, Hyber summons several dimensions in each of his projects and without ever sticking to a defined plastic vocabulary, invests a multitude of writings and supports.    

 

The playful dimension irrigates all the work of the artist who made himself known in 1991 with his self-portrait: "Translation", a 22-tonne soap, moreover registered in the Guinness Book of Records, but this often jubilant approach does not is nowhere more visible than in its POFs (Prototypes of Working Objects). With these objects (POF square ball n°65, POF one-leaf tree n°58, POF endless game n°97), POF shoulder thong n°24) born from a drawing, d an idea or a conversation, Fabrice Hyber displaces the original function of quantities of objects borrowed from our daily lives, as if to better demonstrate to us that for each choice made, an unlimited number of other possibilities exist and that it is up to the artist to reveal them. Tested by the public during exhibitions "Testoo", "At your own risk" ..., the POFs are also the stakes of the C'Hyber Rallies where the artist immerses the competitors for 3 days/nights in a row in his universe.    

After introducing the term artist-entrepreneur at the end of the 1980s, Fabrice Hyber created Unlimited Responsibility, UR, in 1994, a limited liability company intended to promote the production and exchange of projects between artists and entrepreneurs. transform collectors, mainly business leaders, into producers of works”, “cross and bring together diverse territories, act, do”. He continues today this same commitment with the training program “The directors”, carried out in collaboration with art and business schools, to bring young artists to find new means of production. In the same desire to induce or generate new behaviors, in 2012 he initiated the "Organoid" project with the Institut Pasteur.  which connects researchers and artists in order to offer the general public a new vision of biomedical research and its challenges.    

The living and nature are explored at will by the artist who has made green his favorite color: "My green obviously refers to nature and ecology, but it is not that of ecologists who trample often more than they advance, which is the opposite of everything that drives me”. Intermediate states, mutants, hybrids Hyber surrounds himself with new heroes and gives birth to a multitude of animal-plants, running trees or sponge men/women... In Cahors, he plants two hundred fruit trees " the trees of our cities are there like images while the fruit trees bring information” . And since 1995, his ideal forest has been growing in the Vendée valley of his childhood where the artist has sown thousands of trees: "The trees are not planted, I prefer to sow them, it is the least traumatic method for the plant and for the earth, it is also that of the most complete learning! And too bad if it takes time. That's life";    

 

Present in numerous national and international collections, Fabrice Hyber has been involved in a multitude of commissions. Since 1991, his “Homme de Bessines”, small anthropomorphic sculptures whose bodily orifices spit water have invaded towns in France and abroad. “The Artery – the garden of drawings”  1001m2 designed floor in the Parc de La Villette is a place of life and awareness of HIV, while "Le Cri, l'Ecrit"  commemorates in the heart of the Jardin du Luxembourg, the abolition of slavery or "Equilibrium" a sculpture garden in Japan or another in Marfa, Texas.  

   

With each project, the curiosity to invent new forms of intervention on reality leads him to cross, not only techniques, but also knowledge, disciplines and skills.  Thus, with the glass roof of the Hôtel Lutetia (2018), the artist presents the culmination of an experiment on glass on which he worked for several years. The result is a glass watercolor painted between architecture, landscape and sky. In the same way with the work "The two oaks"  produced for the latest Parisian passageway, the Beaupassage (2018), Fabrice Hyber molded and duplicated one of the oldest trees in his Vendée valley to inscribe a mark, a break, a living memory in the heart of the city.   

  

Crossing two colors, two shapes, two words is already inventing. All creation is the result of an encounter, a rapprochement, a crossbreeding, a hybridization. Fabrice Hyber's work embraces and marries a movement, natural and endless, capable of giving birth to a reality and a new energy from an association of people, of ideas carried by an imaginary without prohibition. Inventor of poetic metamorphoses, anticipating the changes to come, the artist cultivates the art of mixing, shifting the limits, opening up the possibilities. Paris, Osaka, Nantes, Rabat, Marfa, Lisbon, Nijni-Novgorod, Moscow, Hamburg, Ghent, Oslo, Tokyo are today the witnesses.

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