Jean Hubert

Born in 1987 in Ivry-sur-Seine (France)
Lives and works between Paris (France) and Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

Jean Hubert graduated in 2010 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (Ensba). During his coursework, he also studied video for one year at the Emily Carr University in Vancouver. He has participated in several exhibitions in France and abroad, notably, “Visio Schermo del Arte,” (Teatro la Compania, Florence, 2016); “The Time I Spent Going Nowhere,” (Billytown, La Haye, 2016); “Personal Science Solution Is For Me,” (Momart, Amsterdam, 2015); “The Script Inside Me Ep- 01,” (Fondation BilbaoArte, Bilbao, 2014); “The Great Indoors” (Motive Gallery, Brussels, 2013); The Rijksakademie Open (Amsterdam, 2012&2013); and the Salon de Montrouge, Paris (2012). In 2016 he had two solo shows, one in Hector, Mexico DFE, “Panorama Jean Hubert,” and the other in la Petite Galerie. As a starting point for Hubert’s film works, there is no plot. There is only an element of speech extracted from reality—i.e., text messages, hijacked phone conversations, lists of proverbs—to which the artist wants to give a second resonance from real life through the form of film. In order to do so, he establishes a protocol, or an ersatz protocol, working with actors, filmed rehearsals, the excavation of a hidden document, a political meeting, etc. This action procedure undoes itself as the film goes along and becomes essentially a visual procedure, that is to say a re-appropriation of a film genre (spy film, love story, propaganda clip.) Through this process Hubert explores the initial material that sparked the film.

In Waiting for Sleep, Hubert investigates the form of a diary through computer-generated animation. Grounding the work in the fantasy genre, he creates an animated film which recounts the daily life of a character, Will, who is a sleepwalker surrounded by zombies. Will narrates this tale via text messages and phone conversations. (“1:33 – I'll save you. 3:49 – How is dad? 3:51 - How are you? It's okay. I take care of everything. How's dad? 3:58 – Good. Good. 4:01 – Yes I am careful, I am very careful,” etc.) This mundane dialogue takes an opposite direction to the action. Hubert’s characters, often in a state of doubting, recount a fictive world other than the one they inhabit. That other world is our reality. They speak of our daily worries, our banal tasks through this window opened by fiction.