New-York

In 1978, Jacques Halbert traveled to the United States for the first time, invited to participate in the Washington art fair by Galerie Lévy. On this occasion, he discovered New York and met the artist Jean Dupuy, who helped him settle there.

Through him, he became involved in the New York avant-garde art scene, moving in circles that included members of Fluxus as well as many emerging artists. Jacques Halbert then took part in several performances and lived through the final years of Collective Consciousness. He exhibited notably in the New York galleries of Gracie Mansion Gallery and Emily Harvey Gallery.

In 1985, in the spirit of FOOD founded by Gordon Matta-Clark and the Eat Art Gallery created by Daniel Spoerri, Jacques Halbert opened The Art Café in the East Village, which he ran for five years. There he organized numerous exhibitions featuring, among others, Allen Jones, Dorothée Selz, and Pierre Restany. Artists such as John Armleder, Olivier Mosset, Charles Dreyfus, Phoebe Legere, François Morellet, Ken Friedman, and Ben Vautier were also shown there.

In 1990, Jacques Halbert left New York to devote himself fully to his artistic practice. He first settled in Florida, then in Los Angeles, successively discovering both American coasts.

Back in New York in 1999, he founded the Magnifik Gallery in Williamsburg, which at the time was undergoing rapid transformation and increasingly populated by artist-run spaces. Jacques Halbert continued his own work in parallel, presented in several exhibitions in the United States and Europe.

Marked by the events of September 11, 2001, Jacques Halbert left the United States permanently shortly thereafter.

In the early 1980s, Jacques Halbert stayed at the Chelsea Hotel, where he had both an apartment and a studio located in what had once been the room of Sid Vicious, the legendary member of the Sex Pistols. There, he met and worked alongside numerous artists and figures from the New York art scene.

A landmark of the artistic and literary avant-garde, the Chelsea Hotel served for decades as a place of residence, creation, and exchange for generations of artists, musicians, writers, and performers.