Prototypes d’Objets en Fonctionnement (POF) — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 20, 2012 → January 20, 2013

Starting October 20, at the MAC/VAL, Fabrice Hyber will present his complete collection of POF (Prototypes d’Objets en Fonctionnement) created between 1991 and 2012, including Ballon carré2 — 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.

Fabrice Hyber, Fabrice Hyber, POF 87 OTO, 1997, 0

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 Chatouille3, 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 bonzaïs4, 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