Mariandrie Chrysostomou
Visual Artist
We had the pleasure of visiting Gauthier Hubert’s solo exhibition Karpettland and finding out more about his practice. Hubert’s paintings bring together vibrant colours, strange forms and a fascination with the awkward or ugly. His titles play an important role, creating a dialogue between words and images while drawing on art history, humour and painting itself. We spoke with Hubert about his practice and the creative process behind his paintings, exploring the ideas that shape his work.
Across your paintings, there is a striking consistency in the facial expressions of your figures, as though they are conveying a particular psychological state. What lies behind this recurring expression?
My work doesn’t seek to express a particular interiority. The presence of a human figure in my work is a pretext to talk about painting, to question the difference between a portrayed strangeness and the beauty of the painting. How can one admire a portrait that generates disgust, discomfort or unease? The represented subject is a means to answer the questions that arise in my titles or the situations they describe.
Titles seem to play an important role in your work. What interests you about the distance between a title and the image it eventually produces, and how do you want viewers to navigate that relationship?
As a viewer, one can take a look at my work without necessarily having the title in mind. In my practice, the title will always precede the painting. It therefore plays the role of a memo, a reminder, which then guides the image. It is a way for me to not forget to make an image, and works like a preliminary sketch of my paintings. There is for me no distance between my initial sketch (the idea behind the painting) and its final form, as the title already resumes what is in my painting.
What drives your practice, and what sparks a new work?
My practice is continuous. The act of writing down a title comes by working on a painting, until the title is itself realised. I am constantly thinking of new titles when painting. The technical gestures induce questions like ‘What would this look like?’ or ‘How would it be if this situation arose?’. Writing down a title allows me to answer these questions. The drive behind my work is this curiosity and ongoing questioning which will continue as long as I am painting.
Karpettland is currently on view at Irène Laub Gallery in Brussels from 10 September to 17 October 2026.
