About
For me, making art has always been intrinsically linked to drawing. Working across a range of materials, drawing allows me to shift between regulation and release, certainty and ambiguity. I am currently combining images I made years earlier with recent drawings, forming new relationships that present moments of quiet alongside an undercurrent of unease.
The draftsmanship in my work oscillates between intricate detail and cartoonish flatness, simultaneously paying homage to—while destabilizing—the real-world materiality of my subjects. Stark oil stick marks cut across carefully composed figures rendered in layers of colored pencil, while graphite lends drawings of animals and oddities a cold, metallic edge. Elsewhere, layered materials impart a warm patina to recurring motifs such as orbs, rainbows, and patterned landscapes. Each work carries a sense of isolation—not so much as a problem to be solved, but as a state that allows clarity to surface.
I have recently expanded my process by creating transfers from printed versions of my drawings. Using a quick, inexpensive method, I print onto silicone-coated release paper—the kind typically discarded after peeling labels or stickers. The surface retains just enough of the image to remain recognizable while staying pliable enough for effective transfer. I scan the strongest results, refine them through post-production software, and integrate them back into an overall composition. This iterative process continues for every element until the work feels nearly exhausted into completion. I am constantly adjusting, dismantling, and rebuilding as I subconsciously search for ideas that matter enough to be given form.
Once the composition is set, I print an ultraviolet “ghost” image onto canvas as a guide for the final work. I then draw over the print using graphite, colored pencil, oil, and pastel. I think of the canvas’s surface texture as tactile “pixels,” simultaneously supporting and resisting the application of pencils, in particular. Select areas are left in their original UV-printed form, revealing a vivid yet disquieting background laced with dreamy unrest, where the printed ink seeps so deeply into the canvas that it seems to slip beyond the viewer’s space. This multi-step progression allows me to manipulate volume, acuity, and stillness within each piece. Even as my methods shift across media, 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 them.
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 Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and MoMA PS1—where he distributed postcard-sized black monochrome screen prints from the back of his pickup truck. A landmark project of his career was the exhibition 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 of Kaufman’s family, the exhibition marked the culmination of a 16-year exploration of the iconic comedian’s life and art.
From 2016 to 2019, Hubble was co-founder and director of Unisex Salon, an artist-run gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, dedicated to presenting the work of underrepresented artists. His work has appeared in publications such as Print Magazine, Taschen Books, and the Chicago Tribune. As an editorial artist, his collage work has also been featured in the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, The New York Times, and MIT Technology Review.
Hubble 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 developed his practice at Edge Hill University near Liverpool, England, as well as 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 obscure works — I identified through research and interviews with Kaufman’s family and collaborators — were originally witnessed only by small nightclub 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 sang Kaufman’s rendition of “Cash for the Merchandise.” Whoever happened to be present experienced that moment uniquely. 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 website 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.