Starting October 20, at the MAC/VAL, Fabrice Hyber will present his complete collection of POF (Prototypes d’Objets en Fonctionnement - «Prototypes of Functioning Objects») created between 1991 and 2012, including Ballon carré - POF no. 65; Oto - POF no. 87, an automotive pushmepullyou; and Ted Hyber – POF no. 51. These are just three among 150 works, each providing the opportunity for visitors to manipulate works of art and put themselves at the heart of the exhibition.

Fabrice Hyber changes our consciousness and uses of these objects, with their reinvented forms suggesting new behaviors. Through the changes in their original functions, these POF generate unique modes of appropriation that often necessitate the invention of a constantly evolving «how-to», bringing into question our relationship with both everyday objects and works of art. Fabrice Hyber is a prolific artist with more than twenty-five years on the international art scene, and received the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale. He has created a rhizomatic oeuvre in which each work of art responds to the others, a protean whole that is the reflection of his burgeoning imagination. Although the techniques of painting, sculpture, installation, and video art – not to mention the world of commerce – are all present, drawings are at the origin of each of Hyber’s works. In this sense, the POF are the product of these media, whether their nature is light, inventive, unexpected or playful – critical, satirical or even utopian – they always contain a certain degree of humor.

This solo exhibition at the MAC/VAL echoes parallel exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo, the Maeght Foundation, and the Pasteur Institute that seek to reveal the output of one of France’s most inventive and stimulating artists.

POF and their Obviousness

«Following in the footsteps of my hybrid objects (like Chatouille, 1988), the first POF appeared in 1991 when I saw that the experimental objects resulting from my explorations also had new functions, that they could provoke and develop unexpected attitudes both in the studio and among the public in exhibitions. The public became real players in the process – in this sense the objects themselves were never truly “finished” – there was a real potential for continuing, durable development. The invention of the label «Prototype d’Objet en Fonctionnement» came from the need to offer the public an alternative to simple contemplation. During one exhibition, I noticed that the object activated a sort of mental ecology in the public, one more positive than an ordinary behavioral ecology – it showed that our actions are often induced ahead of time. POF allow us to absorb new systems, and above all, to invent them. Unlike an industrial prototype, the POF takes on the question of manufacturing methods – little by little becomes a sort of «how-to». The POF libération des bonzaïs, for example, eliminates taboos, offering the
bonsai owner the opportunity to plant their tree directly in the ground. Today, three bonsai plantings exist in Vienna, Tokyo and in the Vendée region. The series of POF has multiplied, taking on a variety of forms. I’ve even imagined POF shops where two sorts of POF coexist: prefabricated objects and do-ityourself techniques for creating POF. I filmed videos for each of them. The videos became POF in themselves because they not only presented a «how-to» with methods of utilization, but also possibilities for functioning. The videos are wordless. POF are openings, possibilities.»

Fabrice Hyber

As part of its exhibitions of private collections, from October 20th la Maison Rouge shows the Giuliana and Tommaso Setari collection.
The collection echoes the many places this Italian couple have lived: New York, Milan, Rome, Capri, Brussels and finally Paris, where they settled in 2001. Wherever in the world they have been, living with art in their home, and contact with artists, have become essential to their existence.

While international in flavour, the Setari collection gives emphasis to European and Italian artists, with Sol Lewitt, Fabrice Hyber, Gerhard Richter, Franz West, Carla Accardi, Luciano Fabro, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Ettore Spalletti. Established names join emerging artists such as Grazia Toderi, Elisabetta Benassi, Bruna Esposito and Fabien Verschaere.

On this occasion, two works by Fabrice Hyber will be presented, the Peinture homéopathique n°22, 2002, 2003 and the P.O.F. n°3 - Balançoire, 1990-2006.

In 2001, Giuliana Setari-Carusi set up a non-profit organisation, the Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art, whose mission is to promote contemporary visual arts. In another of its galleries, la maison rouge gives the Dena Foundation carte blanche to present young Italian artists through a selection of reviews and associations of independent artists. They play a vital role in keeping Italy’s contemporary art scene thriving, after recent years of neglect by public institutions.

The Maeght Foundation presents a new exhibition of Homeopathic Paintings from French contemporary artist Fabrice Hyber from 6 October 2012 to 6 January 2013. More than twenty works, some quite large in size, will be shown among the 30 created by Fabrice Hyber to date. The exhibition also includes a set of Hommes de Bessines (Bessines Men) in the fountains of the Foundation´s gardens. They particularly speak to the works of Miró but equally so to Calder, Giacometti, Dietman or Caro.

Essential, the exhibition title chosen by Fabrice Hyber and Olivier Kaeppelin, emphasizes the subject of the Homeopathic Paintings through all the meanings and the games with which this word lends itself to as well as the importance the artist gives to it. Brought together for the first time, this exhibition of Homeopathic Paintings, a free and conflicting syntheses of his research, will allow a wider audience to discover the work of Fabrice Hyber. Art enthusiasts will find the Maeght Foundation a unique setting to immerse themselves into the heart of this "essential" artist´s work.

"The idea was to draw, without embarrassment, everything that goes through my head about science. And, the medical imagings, apparently, always look without discomfort especially when it comes to genitals ... My commitment to Pasteur was to provide images even less expected, combining medicine and astrophysics, physics and telepathy or trade and genetics. The wall of the elevator, the support of Sans Gêne, makes me think of the double helix of DNA, a large scale, a giant storyboard with five steps. This scale reminds me also of DNA as a forest or the Foucault pendulum, appeared in the same century that Pasteur. I improvised drawings based on information that I had on various elements of work and research that will frame the new building for the Institute, dedicated to emerging diseases.

Some drawings and black text. Others, unlike whiteboards researchers often limited to black, red, blue and green markers, are colored with colors extremely delicate used at Sèvres, which allow unexpected shades.

A large painting (work and research) that contains all the ingredients of my mind and my thoughts on the fundamental and applied research (whether artistic or scientific). Art is sometimes applied to science and vice versa!
Sans Gêne is intended primarily for users of the new building, and therefore to researchers. "

Fabrice Hyber

Opening of the new museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo, the Astrup Fearnley Museet, with a presentation of artworks from the permanent collection, including the magnificent Fabrice Hyber´s homeopathic painting.

PROLONGED UNTIL JANUARY 14.

Fabrice Hyber is one of the most inventive and influential artists of his generation. Interested in the concepts of the rhizome, proliferation and transformation, he attempts to convey a thought in the act of being born. A creative energy that proceeds from movement, displacement, discrepancy and drifting emanates from his hybrid works, made from a variety of materials and mediums.

At the Palais de Tokyo, Fabrice Hyber creates a mental spa with two paths through it, one active, the other contemplative, offering a reconstruction of our physical and virtual landscapes. It takes only a simple square ball or the change in scale of a primary material to modify our point of view.
An elevated footbridge, an imaginary line that connects the works with each other, allows a real passage through time, putting earlier and more recent works into perspective.

As they make their way, viewers are invited to superimpose the past on the present, memory on recollection, the work on its resurgences, so elaborating new forms of stories, new systems of interpretation. An actual walk in which our points of reference are redefined, the exhibition matches this definition by Gilles Deleuze: “An escape into the imagination or art means producing reality, creating life.”