About

For me, making art has always been intrinsically linked to drawing. Using a range of materials, drawing enables me to lose and gain control of my work through focused as well as impulsive mark-making. Right now, I’m combining images I made in years past with recent drawings, uncovering new relationships that reveal moments of inherent quiet and internal agitation.

The draftsmanship in my drawings oscillate between intricate detailing and cartoonish flatness, both mimicking and upending the real-world materiality of the subjects I choose. For instance, stark oil stick marks overlay sections of carefully composed figures rendered with multiple layers of colored pencils. In other areas, graphite lends drawings of birds and engines a cold, metallic edge, while a combination of materials can impart a warm patina to recurring motifs including orbs, rainbows, and patterned landscapes.

I’ve recently expanded this process by making transfers of printed versions of my drawings. I use a quick, inexpensive method, printing on silicone coated release paper—the kind usually discarded after peeling off envelope labels or stickers. The surface retains just enough of the image to be recognizable, but is pliable enough for an effective transfer. I scan the most successful versions, refine them in post-production software, then integrate them into the overall composition. This iterative process continues for every element of a piece until it is nearly exhausted into completion. I’m constantly tweaking, tearing down, and building, because, for me, one of the joys of being an artist is form discovery. It is a constant toggle between control and release, certainty and ambiguity.

Once the composition is set, I print an ultraviolet “ghost” image onto canvas as a guide for the final piece. I then work on top of the print with graphite, colored pencils, oil, and pastels. I like to think of the canvas’s bumps as tactile ‘pixels,’ providing a surface that both supports and challenges the final mark-making process. I leave select areas in their UV print form, exposing a colorful but disquieting background laced with a sense of dreamy unease. This multi-step approach opens space for me to manipulate volume, acuity, and stillness within the piece. My hope is that form and content poetically mingle, as I share the weary, yet meditative space I fall into while making them.

Bio

Brian Hubble has lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York, for over 23 years, with stints in Torbole, Italy, and Chicago, Illinois. His work has been exhibited at notable venues, including the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and MoMA PS1, where he distributed postcard-sized screen prints of monochromes from the back of his pickup truck. A highlight of his career was the exhibition "I Trusted You: Andy Kaufman on the Edge of Performance" at the Museum of the Moving Image, culminating in a 16-year exploration of the iconic comedian’s life and art. From 2016 to 2019, Hubble served as co-founder and director of Unisex Salon, an artist-run gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, dedicated to exhibiting underrepresented artists. His work has appeared in publications such as Print Magazine, Taschen Books, and the Chicago Tribune. As an editorial artist, his work has been featured in the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, the New York Times, and M.I.T. Technology Review. Brian holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received the William Merchant R. French Fellowship. He earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and further honed his skills at Edge Hill University near Liverpool, England, and the Illustration Academy in Richmond, Virginia.

On “I Trusted You: Andy Kaufman at the Edge of Performance” at The Museum of the Moving Image

Andy Kaufman’s (1949-1984) imagination was formed by the television experience. As a child he believed a camera was in his bedroom wall, and enacted his first programming. As a performer, he recognized the disorienting nature of the medium, and used it to play at the intersection of reality, falsehood, and entertainment.

One of Kaufman’s oddest productions was for a PBS series called Soundstage: The Andy Kaufman Show, a parody of late night talk shows. Kaufman’s desk towered 8 feet in the air so he could literally look down on his guests. These props and gestures fed into Kaufman’s obsession with ideas surrounding fame, attention, and the audience’s faith. In a dubious segment called The Has-Been Corner, he idealized “performers” whose heyday was long over. Kaufman presented them on a set that lived somewhere between homage, sincerity and awkwardness, giving them an almost sadistic “second chance.” To highlight the discomfort, Kaufman instructed stage lighting to blink at inopportune moments to further confuse timing and expectation for both performer and audience. His leverage of anticipation and uncomfortable comedy used particular environments and props to elicit raw, visceral reactions.

Kaufman famously claimed to have never told a joke. Instead of asking audiences to envision an off-stage scene like the traditional comedian, he asked them to observe him, behaving strangely. Whether they laughed or became enraged, Kaufman seized the joke’s place. He employed sets and props to position himself as the joke his audiences had to interpret. Similar strategies were used by art collectives like Les Arts Incohérents, Dada, 70’s conceptual artists, and writers such as Eugéne Ionesco and Luigi Pirandello. Just as they pointed at art itself as a construct to be exploited, or the absurdism of living life, Kaufman called into question the system of comedy. Although he shared a sensibility with these groups, Kaufman never identified himself as one of them. Nor was he interested in fulfilling the traditional duty of a comic. His risk as a performer working in the field of popular entertainment was refusing to fill the context of stand-up comedy with the expected content, perplexing audiences along the way.

My exhibition at The Museum of the Moving Image explored the short but prolific career of this bizarre performer. The proposal included a recreated set of Soundstage: The Andy Kaufman Show, with consultation from the original show’s production team. Live reenactments of his classic performances as well as obscure performances that were never recorded would take place on the set and ubiquitously throughout the museum. These unknown performances I discovered through research and interviews with Kaufman’s family and friends were only witnessed by small night club audiences more than 40 years ago. Unreleased episodes of television programming from early in Kaufman’s career, videos of classic performances, props provided by the estate, and drawings of the set by the show’s scenic designer would also be on display.

In an effort to emulate Kaufman’s unique sense of authenticity, classic and unrecorded performance reenactments took place at secret times rather than on a public schedule. It caused audiences to wonder in the moment if what they were witnessing was actually part of the exhibition, harkening the truest spirit of Kaufman’s work. A diverse group of collaborators worked through these reenactments in real time, giving them permission to be “an other.” They donned a persona as Andy did, eventuating and exaggerating aspects of him they had hidden in themselves. For instance, viewers might be present when an unannounced performer casually laid out a sleeping bag on the floor, zipped it completely around themselves, and started reading The Great Gatsby by flashlight, while another simultaneously played the congas and sung Kaufman’s rendition of “Cash for the Merchandise.” Whoever was in the museum at that time would have that particular experience. Each day would be unique. Live streams of these happenings would be placed throughout the museum to expand on the revolving in-house studio audience, and on its web site to usher Kaufman into a media he surely would have experimented in. Between performances, the set would exist as an installation that viewers would have walked through freely. Together, they activated the museum as a site that showed how performance was imagined by this enigmatic figure.

Over the years, Andy’s brother Michael and I have had many discussions about the mysticism of Andy, and how his work can be explored today. Examining Kaufman’s ethos through this exhibition was instrumental to our understanding of the strange coordinates that lie between art, comedy, and performance. Reenactments of his works as temporal experiences expanded the language of these disciplines in personal ways, while institutional analysis of his performance history illuminated his role in this regard. At the same time, Kaufman’s relationship to our present moment cannot be understated. He understood the power a stage can provide, and how performance can co-opt truth to stir emotions in an audience. His work serves to disrupt this pattern, and asks us to consider our own (unusual) relationship with reality.