Aquilès Yubero

Aquilès Yubero, 1964, Geneva, Switzerland Those who deplore, in the world of contemporary art, the loss of know-how in favor of the concept will be happy to discover the recent work of Aquiles Yubero. The Swiss artist of Spanish origin is definitely not shy. With humor and dexterity, he diverts coins to transform them into aesthetic, funny and rebellious objects. This is not the first time that an artist has played with the sacrosanct silver. We remember the Dollar bills of Andy Wharol or Serge Gainsbourg burning, in front of the camera, a 500-franc note, well aware that his gesture is illegal, and who mumbles: "If they put me in jail, I have nothing to worry about, I will go on a diet! However, when we observe the work of Aquiles Yubero, we do not feel the impression of deja vu. On the contrary, we immediately want to understand how his different pieces were made. The artist is not stingy with his explanations. Modestly, he explains his approach. The plastic artist chose coins because he found the medium interesting, dealing with objects handled daily, symbolically charged and existing since ancient times. He is aware that this is an object that exists in almost all parts of the world, that it belongs to everyone and at the same time to no one, because it is a property of the State. He chose the coin rather than the note, because it does not necessarily evoke wealth, can belong even to the most deprived and above all allows the type of intervention he wanted to make him undergo. By the very fact that he embezzles coins, Aquiles Yubero transforms objects of use value into objects of artistic value. To modify them, he called on his know-how as an engraver and sculptor. His approach is generally as follows: he chooses a piece that seems to him to have a certain potential for transformation - he considers it, of course, taking into account the country to which it belongs. Then, depending on how he wants to divert it, the artist removes it from the material, pushes it back if necessary in another place, hollow or sculpts. Aquiles Yubero talks about third degree hijacking. His humor is instantaneous. The connivance with the spectator is established, in fact, from the outset. As soon as we look at the pieces, we feel a curiosity, a complicity or a certain uneasiness in the face of the irreverent and mischievous act. Thus we will see our dear impoverished Helvétie, because undressed, but not in a brutal way, rather like an antique nude, and William Tell, our national hero, stripped of his flesh, skeleton giggling funny under his hood, "to pay or not to pay? He seems to ask. If Aquiles Yubero began by working with the money of his homeland, he extended his derision without acrimony to the currencies of other countries. We will see the American dollar transformed into Thanksgiving turkey and the Queen of England transformed into punk. Some coins have also simply lost their use value, by the fact that their amount has been erased. This free transformation, a sort of potlatch, is disturbing: we are embarrassed in the face of this money which is no longer worth anything. The work is skillful: beautiful and precise. If Aquiles Yubero wants to disturb, however, he does not want to hurt. He abandoned a project on a Japanese play, finding little point in stirring the memory of the Japanese people, when current events already violently attack their conscience. It is rather for the artist to offer us a breath of fresh air, a slightly offbeat look at money, to play down our relationship to it. He cites Marcel Aymé with mischief: “Money sentences last longer than heartaches and are passed on from generation to generation. One thing is absolutely certain, our pleasure as spectators will be great in front of the delicacy of the work carried out by the masterful hand of Aquiles Yubero. Laure Mi Hyun Croset