Hubert Duprat

Hubert Duprat has been developing for thirty years a singular work whose importance is beginning to be fully understood. His work is that of a sculptor who, from the radical questioning that Minimal Art and conceptual art represented in the 1960s and 1970s, explores a personal path that reverses traditionally accepted categories - notably the opposition between art and craft.

The Phrygane - or Trichoptera -, which Hubert Duprat has called "the artisan insect" since the 1980s, partly crystallizes his approach: taking advantage of a particular behavioural characteristic of the larvae of this insect, the artist has come to delegate the creation of some of his works to them. The twigs with which they build a tubular sheath have been replaced by fine pieces of gold, pearls or small stones (turquoise or opal); thus, without the direct intervention of the sculptor, pieces with an enigmatic and precious appearance, unique and non-reproducible are produced.

With Corail Costa Brava (1994-2016), a complex polyhedron made of coral and bread crumb, Hubert Duprat explores the sculptural possibilities of assembling heterogeneous materials, forcing the original tree structure to espouse the artist's idea. An object worthy of curiosity cabinets, its form is addressed as much to the eye as to the mind, as an invitation to "metaphysical meditations".