The Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain presents La Vallée, a major exhibition devoted to Fabrice Hyber's painting, conceived as a school. A place of learning, experimentation and refuge, the Vallée, a forest he has been growing since the 1990s in the heart of the Vendée bocage, has become the matrix and source of inspiration for the artist's entire body of work. Artist, sower, entrepreneur, poet, Fabrice Hyber incorporates into the field of art all areas of life, from mathematics to neuroscience, commerce, history, astrophysics, but also love, the body and the mutations of the living.
From December 8, 2022 to April 30, 2023, the Fondation Cartier presents The Valleya major monograph devoted to the work of Fabrice Hyber. In his canvases painted "with his fingertips", the French artist reveals the unfolding of a free and lively thought process. Bringing together some sixty canvases, including almost fifteen works produced specifically for the exhibition, Fabrice Hyber creates a school at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain open to all hypotheses. Visitors are invited to walk through a series of classrooms, following the twists and turns of the artist's thinking.
Artist, sower, entrepreneur, poet, Fabrice Hyber is the author of prolific, precisely catalogued works. Disregarding categories, he incorporates into the field of art all areas of life, from mathematics to neuroscience, commerce, history, astrophysics, but also love, the body and the mutations of the living.
" I've always thought of my paintings as classroom chalkboards, the ones on which we've learned to dissect our knowledge through teachers or researchers. They suggest other worlds, possible or impossible projects. In this exhibition, I've chosen to install works in the place of paintings of a possible school. "
Fabrice Hyber
From the Valley to the work
The multiple dimensions of Fabrice Hyber's art are rooted in the forest he has been growing since the 1990s in the heart of the Vendée bocage, around his parents' former sheep farm. Some 300,000 tree seeds of several hundred different species, sown using a patiently perfected technique, have gradually transformed the farmland into a forest of several dozen hectares. The landscape has become a work of art.
" With La Vallée, I first wanted to reconstitute a wooded landscape around my parents' farm to create a natural barrier to the surrounding industrial agriculture and those who developed it. Every time something is set up, I look elsewhere to find alternative choices. It's systematic. "
A place of learning, experimentation and refuge, the Valley has become the matrix and source of inspiration for the entire body of work of the artist, who readily compares his practice to the organic growth of living organisms: " Basically, I do the same thing with my works: I sow trees just as I sow signs and images. They're there, I sow seeds of thought that are visible, they make their way and grow. I'm no longer their master.
Painting a thought in motion
Among the wide variety of Fabrice Hyber's artistic practices, none is more evocative of the action of sowing than painting. As the starting point for each of his projects, and the seedbed for all future work, it occupies a primordial place in the artist's work. On large-format canvases lined up in his studio, Hyber formulates hypotheses, combines ideas, invents forms and plays with words:
" Since the beginning of my work, I've used a lot of water and very little material. This gives incredible effects, very light canvases. My oil paintings are all watercolors. In the end, there's very little intervention; I do the same thing in my paintings as I do in nature."
Moving from one painting to the next, he notes a phrase here, draws an image there, sticks an object elsewhere, in small strokes, according to his imagination and speculation. Every step counts. This process of creation "by accumulation" enriches the work with all the potentialities opened up by thought in motion. The canvas thus becomes a space for learning and teaching. I learn by doing, and I want to pass it on. ".
A school exhibition
If Fabrice Hyber has imagined his exhibition as a school, it's precisely to share this other way of learning, born in particular in the Valley. The exhibition's scenography, reminiscent of both classrooms and playgrounds, encourages visitors to learn, to move around, to open doors, to look over windows, to step over shapes, to play, but also to sit on a bench or in front of a desk to observe the works that serve as blackboards for this learning process. Fabrice Hyber stages various ways of learning from a painting. In the short videos that accompany the works, the artist retraces the mental path that led to their creation. He invites visitors to draw on the gaps opened up by the paintings to formulate their own hypotheses and make their own associations:
" In my opinion, what's important in a school, more than learning things, is learning to look at them and observe how they evolve. "
Classes open to all visitors will be offered by mediators specializing in subjects as diverse as world measurements, fruit shapes, body hybridization, weather, sport, play, digestion and transformation. Added to this is an ambitious program of classes in residence, co-organized with partner schools*, as well as "evening classes", also available as podcasts. Taught in pairs by experts in their fields, these classes are an opportunity to put to the test the hypotheses put forward by the artist in his works. Bringing together a chef and a gardener, an athlete and a philosopher, a climatologist and a writer, a choreographer and a sexologist, or a landscape architect and an art historian, these classes are an opportunity to test the hypotheses put forward by the artist in his or her work.La Vallée This is a perfect illustration of the richness of Fabrice Hyber's artistic approach.
Fabrice Hyber, Placenta, 2017 Gold leaf, watercolor, charcoal, oil paint on canvas, 250 x 150cm © Fabrice Hyber / Adagp, Paris, 2022. Fabrice Hyber.
Fabrice Hyber
Fabrice Hyber, born in Vendée in 1961, studied mathematics before entering the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes. His work invariably begins with drawing and painting, and extends to all modes of expression. Interferences, interactions, influences on behavior... are at the heart of his approach.
Each time, his variable-geometry approach is enriched by a dialogue with multiple disciplines (from physics to neuroscience, from astronomy to herbal medicine...) to send the spectator/actor back to a larger site. Whether it's L'Hybermarché at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, Eau d'or, Eau dort, ODOR, a television studio for which he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1997, or the Chaosgraphie of Vivaldi's 4 Seasons... with Angelin Preljocaj, Hyber brings several dimensions to each of his projects, and without ever sticking to a defined plastic vocabulary, invests a multitude of writings and media.
Having coined the term "artist-entrepreneur" in the late 1980s, in 1994 he set up Unlimited Responsibility (UR), a limited liability company designed to promote the production and exchange of projects between artists and entrepreneurs. In the same spirit of inducing or generating new behaviors, in 2012 he initiated the Organoïde project with the Institut Pasteur, bringing together researchers and artists to offer the general public a new vision of biomedical research and its challenges.
Present in numerous national and international collections, Fabrice Hyber has been involved in a multitude of commissions. His Homme de Bessines, small anthropomorphic sculptures whose body orifices spit water, have been invading cities in France and abroad since 1991.
L'Artère - le jardin des dessins, a 1001m2 designed ground in the Parc de La Villette, is a place for living and raising awareness of HIV, while Le Cri, l'Ecrit commemorates the abolition of slavery in the heart of the Jardin du Luxembourg. He is also the author of Equilibrium, a sculpture garden in Japan and another in Marfa, Texas.
Transmission is at the heart of this artist's work, for whom "art is the only way to learn about the world through the interaction of disciplines".
He taught at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts from 2002 to 2005, then created the Les Réalisateurs program in collaboration with art and business schools. He plans to set up various "training courses" mixing disciplines, in Pantin as part of Hyber-fabrique, in Villefranche-sur-Mer, and of course in Vendée, where he is creating his foundation.
Fabrice Hyber was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2018, and in 2021 was appointed ambassador of the Office National des Forêts-Agir pour la forêt fund.
Fabrice Hyber, The Valley "From December 8, 2022 to April 30, 2023, at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, 261, Boulevard Raspail - 75014 - Paris
Header image Fabrice Hyber - Biographical landscape by Pierre Giquel, 2017 - Watercolor, charcoal, oil paint on canvas 250 X 700 cm, ©Fabrice Hyber / Adagp, Paris 2022.
