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French artist moves his forest to Shanghai’s Power Station of Art
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Fabrice Hyber has moved his forest to Shanghai. Not with trucks or crates, but with canvases, ceramics, and the quiet persistence of ideas.
At the Power Station of Art, the French artist — once a mathematician, now a sower of both trees and thoughts — has recreated his “vallée,” a living, breathing landscape born from the 300,000 seeds he planted in western France. Here, in the cavernous former power plant, visitors walk through glades of green giants, blackboard-like paintings, and ceramic whispers from China’s porcelain capital of Jingdezhen, invited not just to look, but to think, to learn, and to grow.
Titled “… de la vallée” (from the valley), the exhibition brings more than 70 of Hyber’s works — spanning from the 1990s to newly commissioned pieces. The show unfolds like a walk through Hyber’s mind: layered, organic, and endlessly branching.
Visitors encounter monumental sculptures, water-heavy canvases, school-like installations, and brand-new ceramic panels created in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province. More than a retrospective, the exhibition is a transplanted ecosystem — a poetic and intellectual landscape where science, art, nature, and imagination take root side by side.
“I sow trees just as I sow signs and images. I sow seeds of thought that are visible, they make their way and grow. I am no longer their master,” the artist said.
Stepping into the exhibition, visitors are greeted by a towering green figure — Ted Hyber, part teddy bear, part self-portrait of the artist. Standing nearly 10 meters tall, this inflated sculpture isn’t just playful, it’s symbolic. “The trees I planted in France in the 1990s should be about 10 meters high by now,” Hyber explained. “So I made the bear 10 meters too.”
Positioned at the center of a symbolic garden, the giant seems to have just arrived, with painted cracks spreading from his feet across the floor, as if he’s breaking ground — literally and metaphorically.
At the heart of Hyber’s creative universe is painting — not as a finished product, but as a starting point. His canvases are like living notebooks, where hypotheses, sketches, fragments of thought, and unexpected objects coexist.
“Since I started painting, I use a lot of water and very little material,” he said. “My oil paintings are essentially watercolors.” The result is a series of light, fluid surfaces where ideas float freely — half image, half experiment.
For this exhibition, Hyber created a series of large-format works and also ventured into a new medium: enameled ceramic panels produced in Jingdezhen. Glazed with his characteristic blend of humor, science, and poetry, these panels extend his painting practice into a new dimension — one both heavier in materials and, paradoxically, lighter in spirit.
This creative journey with porcelain also led Hyber beyond the museum walls. Last year, he was invited to bring his ceramic language into Shanghai’s public space — this time underground.
To mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and China, Shanghai Metro commissioned Hyber to create a pair of monumental artworks for the Lujiazui Station. Titled La forêt and L’amitié, the murals were conceived and produced in Jingdezhen, where the artist worked closely with local artisans.
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