Born in the Vendée in 1961, Fabrice Hyber lives and works in Paris.
Since his beginning in the '80s and as he became one of the youngest Golden Lion recipients at the 1997 Venice Biennial, the artist has been receiving increasing attention on the international stage. He exhibited his works in many prestigious institutional sites both in France and abroad and has been taking part in important international artistic events for over 20 years. He was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2018.
Fabrice Hyber's work has recently been featured in solo shows such as Prototypes at the Appartement 22 in Rabat (Morocco), 2019; hyberDUBUFFET at Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris (France), 2017; in 2015, Bart De Baere, the Director of M HKA in Antwerp (Belgium) presented Formes des mots and invited the artist to participate in the 6th Moscow Biennial (Russia), the White Box in New York (USA), an alternative space located in the Bowery neighbourhood, presented Maison des POFS curated by Tony Guerrero, the CRAC Languedoc Roussillon in Sète (France) dedicated an ambitious solo exhibition entitled 2716m2 to the artist, bringing together more than 300 paintings; Raw materials at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle (United Kingdom), 2013; in 2012, the solo exhibition Matières Premières at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (France) which was a resounding public and critical success, Essentiel at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (France), where he exhibited his homeopathic patinings - Galerie der Stadt Tuttlingen (Germany) picked up the exhibition later in 2014 - as well as Prototypes d'objets en fonctionnement (POF) at the MAC/VAL de Vitry (France); his monumental tiled fresco entitled Sans Gêne, commissioned by the Institut Pasteur in Paris (France), was inaugurated in 2012.
The artist also benefited from major exhibitions in many renowned institutions, notably Notre monde brûle at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (France) in 2020; Nous les arbres at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2019, but also La Source at the Fondation Carmignac in Porquerolles (France); Picasso et après : un éloge de la fabrique (Picasso-Méditerranée) at the Musée de Vence in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (France) in 2018; in 2015, the Centre Pompidou Metz (France) presented the group show Aura. Art et télépathie de Rodin à nous jours, curated by Pascal Rousseau, featuring works from the 19th to the 21st century, from Rodin to Fabrice Hyber; in 2014, he took part in the Busan Biennial (South Korea), and he was featured in the exhibition Narcisse, l'image dans l'onde at the Fondation François Scheinder in Wattwiller (France) as well as in Brave New worlds : Utopia in Dystopia at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila (Philippines); in 2013, he participated in the 6th Lyon Biennial (France).
Fabrice Hyber has been represented by la Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels, since 2014.
"My paintings are moments of euphoria in which I set landscapes, bodies or processes currently either undergoing transformation or being questioned". This is the description given by Fabrice Hyber of his works, which to him are like "solutions for adaptation that go as far as the possibility of mutation". This remark strikes a chord with the artist's first solo exhibition in 1986, titled Mutation. This title-cum-manifesto could alone describe the close on thirty years of graphical and conceptual reflection in which the artist has always attempted to represent the multiple processes of transformation of matter and the unbounded power of works of art for metamorphosis.
Many several themes are dear to the heart of the artist, for example, hybridization which is a nod in the direction of the Darwinian theory of evolution in which species adapt to their environment in a process of perpetual transformation. "Become fluid" is one of the solutions captioned and proposed by Fabrice Hyber for adaptation to respond to climate change, and is also indicative of his ecological concerns; or also the transformation of organic matter. Moreover, it is from this type of play that his Prototypes d'Objets en Fonctionnement (known as POFs) are derived. For the most part fabrications, they are devices or situations that invite visitors to interact with them and invent a usage. The subversive mission of the POFs is to "encourage mutations to the point of creating new systems of diffusion". In so doing, they run counter to the trend of Pop Art, by taking art into the world of consumption rather than vice-versa. These non-exhaustive examples of mutations are necessary to Hyber "to advance and conquer new forms". They prompt new ideas in this artist who develops his paintings through the use of story-boards in which images are associated with words that provide their "regarders" with keys to their understanding. Various notes, calculations and annotations dot the surface of the canvas, resembling the blackboard of a researcher or a botanist's plate.
Hyber's approach is precise and almost always starts with a drawing. "At the beginning, there is often a design, a freehand sketch in charcoal or pastels on the canvas, a first 'phrase' that announces the premonition of a more comprehensive project", says Hyber. The speed with which the design is created stimulates the free emergence of unfettered ideas, in what he calls "states of non-vigilance". It is these that give free rein to his desire to transform of the world. This outlook, which is as political as it is poetic, is an expression of the rebellious and libertarian spirit that makes Fabrice Hyber one of the most important artists of his generation.