Mattt KONTURE Jean de l'Ours et autres

To celebrate the publication of the third and final volume of Jean de l'Ours (L'Association), the Huberty & Breyne Gallery in Miromesnil is hosting a retrospective of the work of Mattt Konture including over a hundred plates and drawings, executed in black ink, some with scratched, textured surfaces.

Immediately recognisable thanks to his long dreadlocks (which he has even used as a painting tool), Mattt Konture is one of the founders of L'Association, the publishing house that took the world of comic strip by storm in 1990 when it launched its experimental books and autobiographical stories in black and white and in unusual formats. Mattt Konture is a self-taught artist and has been telling his own story since 1988, in Krokodile Comix, Les Contures (in which he offers the key to his pseudonym), Autopsy d'un mort-vivant, and Sclérose en plaques, an account of the illness with which he was diagnosed in 2005.

In Jean de l'Ours - a collaboration with Jacques Velay - he applies his skills to something very different, rendering in precise, black and white drawings the trials and tribulations of the eponymous hero of a Pyrenean folk tale, half-bear, half-human. The youthful and ingenuous Jean meets a variety of characters on his travels - neo-rural punks, a pretty shepherdess and her temperamental billy goat, a gluttonous beaver - and must learn to recognise his own strength and control his impulses, and so master his dual nature.

The trilogy, begun in 2010, and unlike anything else Mattt Konture has produced before, concludes with this third volume, published in April 2022, and the Huberty & Breyne Gallery is delighted to be showing the totality of plates from Jean de l'Ours, in addition to several punk rock drawings and covers from the magazines Lapin and Jambon blindé. This is an exceptional retrospective focusing on the work of an essential author.

Private view / Signing session: Thursday 14 April from 5.30pm to 8.30pm.
Registration with laure@hubertybreyne.com

Works available to view online from Friday 15 April 2022.