About
Drawing has always been central to my process. Working across a range of materials, it allows me to move between control and release, certainty and ambiguity. I often combine images made years apart with recent drawings, forming new relationships that hold quiet moments alongside undercurrents of unease.
My draftsmanship oscillates between intricate detail and cartoon-like flatness, both honoring and destabilizing the material presence of my subjects. Stark oil stick marks interrupt carefully rendered figures built up in colored pencil, while graphite lends drawings of animals and oddities a cold, metallic edge. In contrast, layered materials impart a warm patina across recurring motifs such as orbs, rainbows, and patterned landscapes. Each work carries a sense of isolation, not as something to resolve, but as a state that allows clarity to surface.
Recently, I have expanded my process through image transfers. Using silicone-coated release paper, typically discarded after labels are peeled, I print and lift partial images, preserving just enough detail to remain legible while allowing for distortion. I scan and digitally refine these fragments before reintegrating them into the composition. This cycle of adjustment, erosion, and reconstruction continues until the image feels exhausted to near completion.
Once a composition is set, I print an ultraviolet “ghost” image onto canvas as a guide. I then draw and paint over the print using graphite, colored pencil, oil, and pastel. I think of the canvas surface as a field of tactile “pixels,” simultaneously supporting and resisting the mark. Select areas are left in their original UV-printed form, revealing vivid sections laced with a kind of dreamy unrest, where the printed ink seeps so deeply into the canvas that it seems to slip beyond the viewer’s space.
This layered process allows me to modulate volume, acuity, and stillness. Even as materials shift, drawing remains the anchor. My hope is that form and content mingle poetically, inviting the viewer to enter the wary yet meditative space I drift into while making the work.
Biography
Brian Hubble has lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York, for more than two decades, with formative periods in Torbole, Italy, and Chicago, Illinois. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples, and at MoMA PS1, where he distributed postcard-sized black monochrome screen prints from the back of his pickup truck.
A landmark project in his career is I Trusted You: Andy Kaufman on the Edge of Performance, presented at the Museum of the Moving Image in Kaufman’s hometown of Queens, New York. Realized with the support and participation of Kaufman’s family, the exhibition culminated a 16-year investigation into the life and work of the iconic performer.
From 2016 to 2019, Hubble was co-founder and director of Unisex Salon, an artist-run space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, dedicated to presenting underrepresented artists.
His work has also appeared in The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Print Magazine, Taschen publications, and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, where his collage work has been featured in both editorial and archival contexts.
Hubble holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received the William Merchant R. French Fellowship, and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. He also studied at Edge Hill University near Liverpool, England, and at 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 shaped by the television experience. As a child, he believed a camera was embedded in his bedroom wall and staged his first “programs” for it. As a performer, he recognized the medium’s disorienting effects and used them to operate at the intersection of reality, fabrication, and entertainment.
One of Kaufman’s more unusual productions was The Andy Kaufman Show, created for the PBS series Soundstage, a parody of late-night talk shows. Kaufman’s desk towered eight feet in the air, allowing him to literally look down on his guests. These exaggerated props and gestures fed into his fascination with fame, attention, and the audience’s faith. In a dubious segment titled The Has-Been Corner, he celebrated “performers” long past their prime. Presented on a set that hovered between homage, sincerity, and awkwardness, these appearances offered an almost sadistic “second chance.” To heighten the discomfort, Kaufman instructed the stage lighting to blink at inopportune moments, disrupting timing and expectation for both performer and audience. His manipulation of anticipation and unease relied on carefully constructed environments and props to provoke raw, visceral reactions.
Kaufman famously claimed he never told a joke. Rather than asking audiences to imagine an offstage scenario, as traditional comedians do, he asked them to observe him behaving strangely. Whether audiences laughed or grew enraged, Kaufman displaced the joke onto himself. Through sets and props, he positioned his own presence as something to be interpreted. Similar strategies can be found in movements such as Les Arts Incohérents, Dada, and 1970s conceptual art. Just as these movements exposed art as a construct or emphasized the absurdity of lived experience, Kaufman called into question the system of comedy itself. Despite this shared sensibility, he never aligned himself with such movements, nor was he interested in fulfilling the conventional role of a comic. His risk, as a performer working within popular entertainment, was in refusing to meet the expectations of stand-up comedy, leaving audiences perplexed.
My exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image explored the brief yet prolific career of this enigmatic performer. The proposal included a recreation of the Soundstage: The Andy Kaufman Show set, developed in consultation with members of the original production team. Live reenactments of both well-known and rarely documented performances took place on the set and throughout the museum. These lesser-known works, identified through research and interviews with Kaufman’s family and collaborators, were originally witnessed only by small nightclub audiences more than forty years ago. Also on display were unreleased television episodes from early in Kaufman’s career, recordings of his iconic performances, props provided by his estate, and set drawings by the show’s scenic designer.
In an effort to emulate Kaufman’s distinct sense of authenticity, reenactments occurred at unannounced times rather than on a fixed schedule. This approach encouraged audiences to question whether what they were witnessing was part of the exhibition, echoing the spirit of Kaufman’s work. A diverse group of collaborators engaged in these performances in real time, adopting personas as Kaufman did, by exaggerating aspects of themselves they had hidden within. For example, a visitor might encounter an unannounced performer laying out a sleeping bag, zipping themselves inside, and reading The Great Gatsby by flashlight, while another simultaneously played congas and performed Kaufman’s conga routine from The Music Man. Each moment existed only for those present, making every day of the exhibition unique.
Live streams of these performances were distributed throughout the museum and on its website, extending the experience beyond the immediate audience and situating Kaufman within a media landscape he likely would have explored. Between performances, the set functioned as an installation through which visitors could freely move. In this way, the exhibition activated the museum as a space for understanding how performance was imagined and enacted by Kaufman.
Over the years, Andy’s brother Michael and I have had many conversations about the mysticism surrounding his work and how it might be explored today. Examining Kaufman’s ethos through this exhibition deepened our understanding of the space between art, comedy, and performance. The reenactments, as temporal experiences, expanded the language of these disciplines in personal ways, while the institutional framing of his work clarified his significance. At the same time, Kaufman’s relevance to the present moment is undeniable. He understood the power of the stage and how performance can blur truth to provoke emotional response. His work disrupts this dynamic, prompting us to reconsider our own unusual relationship with reality.