Séverine Hubard, Bourse de la Région Alsace   

    The impressive energy deployed by Séverine Hubard (born in Lille in 1977) in her numerous installations realised in France and abroad since 1999, results for the most of it, in her conception of artistic work as « creations of materialisation and de-materialisation's dispositions ».

    Constituted of many sets of wood elements, whether assembled in the form of constructions standing on industrially manufactured paddles, whether disposed in the form of plates set on shelves along a wall. The piece called Contractage suggests, in spite of its obvious stability, the idea of an « activity » temporarily suspended, the idea of the « mobility » of its componants affecting its occupation of space as much as its own structure.

    One can imagine easily that some elements of the constructed objects could have been rooted out amongst those deployed, like a catalogue of disponible shapes set on the adjoining shelves. Instead of polarizing the surrounding free space by its plans and lines – like would a constructivist sculpture posed on a plinth do – each one of those assemblings occupies, on those heterogeneous stands a volume restricted by the paddle and, in most case, restricted by the proximity of its adjoining construction. When one occupying alone its level of presentation, it is easy to guess that during an ulterior Contractage exhibition, another one, pre-existing or in conception, will come next to it not to restrain its visibility but to determine a certain exploration by the viewer's eye.

    Despite their modest sizes, these constructions articulate their restricted spaces with a diversity of composition wich requests each time an examination as carefull as usually done on architecture models : that is to say to attempt to discern the alternation of «rules» and «fantasy» with which their assembling was operated. Moreover the video suggests this way of «architectural understanding » since each of her photographs of diverse buildings leads to a piece which the arrengement takes certain caracteristical traits. On the same paddle, at the reverse of the monitor is presented a model made of a quite homogeneous material which seems to reproduce by many aspects the structure of the adjoining shelve. On the contrary, this shelve is realised, with unhomogeneous componants taken from recovered materials as much as brand new ones in «kits» waiting to be assembled.

    But on the other hand it would be naively reducing to think that by this aknowledged reference to architecture and the use of models, Séverine Hubard gives us what is at the bottom of her method or of the subject that underlies her process. By their settings in the installation, the «supports» of these «informations» still remain elements of her configuration, capable of being moved, modified or even disappear in an ulterior «interpretation» of this piece. The freedom taken playing with scales of objects shows less of a figurative ease than an active immersion of this artist in the actual flow of things and pictures.

    The double fresco composed by elements backed on to the wall shows a chromatic harmony made of multiple shades of the wood colour interacting with variable densities of greens and few touches of whites. This pictural dimension is enriched by superpositions of those planks which blends to the variety of their cuts and sometimes on the work done to draw graphic melodies organising the chaotic ungraded product of these fragments. And it is to a certain extent of this subtle compositional elegance - very close to a jazz improvisation - that it is then possible to appreciate the consonance of these small sculptures with their architecture photographs...

    The artistic energy of Séverine Hubard seems to have at stake to dissolve the compact Accumulation of leftovers and stocks to give them back a fluidity, giving Shapes to an Emptiness then recovered. Her answer to this actual emergency takes its conviction from a very personnal experience of many art forms like naming ones piece : Contractage, may be condensing «contraction» and «assemblage», and wouldn't it show a poetical freedom taken and be as inventive in re-activation of things as in re-activation of words?

Paul Guérin translated by Noé Paccosi