Hubert Duprat
Solo show.
The relative scarcity of Hubert Duprat’s solo exhibitions only makes each of them more valuable. If one does not seek in the sculptures of the artist any sign immediately identifiable in terms of style, one finds a set of common features and family similarities between the pieces. In the first place, the importance given to the material, of which Duprat perverts the current use, until the obvious counter-employment. This is the case with the polishing of the resin or the cutting of plywood then reassembled into a marquetry. We also recognize a predilection for volumes whose simplicity is deconstructed by unusual optic effects, Duprat exploiting the specific properties of the chosen materials. Combined with games of scale and localization, gestures or plastic treatments produce unexpected and even aberrant spatiality.
Reactivation of handmade processes or natural phenomena – such as the inclusion -, recovery of old techniques – such as marquetry -, the work of Hubert Duprat associates the major and the minor. Taking into consideration the contrasting connotations of these practices, the artist draws from their diversion ambivalent objects, on the border of the monster and the wonder.
By Natacha Pugnet.
