Fabrice Hyber
Cellman
The works of Fabrice Hyber provoke divergent ways of thinking. In a kindred spirit with Raymond Hains, image and writing are intertwined. Drawings and diagrams are visually direct, as shown in the series of Peintures Homéopathiques (Homeopathic Paintings), collages covered in transparent resin (1986-1988). In Cellman (2003) on the bottom right, stones and the arrows refer to skipping stones of “thinking”. A recurring human figure, commonly associated with Hyber’s theatrical world, is shown in Cellman and alsoL’homme de Bessines (1990). The artist uses writing as an engine of formal and semantic associations (“galet, galette, cellman, bulle, cellule “). The figure recalls that the body is a collection of cells. Like in the work Artère, le jardin des dessins (Artery, the garden of drawings, a monument commissioned by Sidaction, Parc de la Vilette, Paris), the artist captures the inner workings of the body through schemas.
In each of his self-portraits, Fabrice Hyber (he removed the last "t" in Hybert in 2004) is elusive. This has been expressed in the photo "C'est le moment de se préparer à de nouvelles expériences" (It's time to prepare for new experiences) (1987), or when we look at the upside down, hanging by one foot in "Traduction, le plus gros savon du monde" (Translation, the biggest soap in the world) (1991). "I? am an alien! " says the artist. "Games and shifts are the only things able to face any kind of fundamentalism. Trade, commerce, image and poetry are means of osmosis. Through them gradually you can set up all of the ways to increase life beyond death. It is necessary to mix time, upgrade products, and imagine that works die in order to be assimilated then revisited. A work is absolutely not precognitive but always from here" said Fabrice Hyber in conversation with Thierry Laurent.
Fabrice Hyber was born in 1961 in Luçon, France. He lives and works in Paris.