ART CITIES:Brussels-Fabrice Hyber

A year after his first collaboration with the Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Fabrice Hyber, presents for the first time to the Brussels gallery, where he will show his exhibition “Mutations Acquises”. For the occasion the show is bringing together fifteen or so new paintings, each an invitation to discover Fabrice Hyber’s factory of functional dreams and fantasies, as he said: “My paintings are moments of euphoria in which I set landscapes, bodies or processes currently either undergoing transformation or being questioned”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Nathalie Obadia Gallery Archive

This is the description given by Fabrice Hyber of the works exhibited at the Galerie Nathalie Obadia, which to him are like “solutions for adap-tation 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. His “Mutations Acquises” are illustrative of different themes dear to the heart of the artist, for exa- mple, hybridization, here embodied by an octopus whose tentacles end in human organs: itself 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 pro-posed by Fabrice Hyber for adaptation to respond to climate change, and is also indicative of his ecological concerns. These are further illustrated in a drawing on the theme of recycling in which three mountains of waste appear in a joyously colourful yet toxic landscape: this reference to our ambivalent attitude is treated with the artist’s typically ironic tone.

Info: ‘’Mutations Acquises’’, Nathalie Obadia,8 rue Charles Decoster, Brussels, Duration: 4/2-4/4/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri: 10:00-18:00, Sat: 12:00-18:00, www.galerie-obadia.com

*From 24/4/15, the French artist, at the invitation of Bart de Baere, will be exhibiting a series of new works on forms of language at the MUHKA in Antwerp