Gilles Barbier

Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris
Through November 10

Gilles Barbier creates pieces that are funny, ironic, and extravagant yet pose serious questions about the accepted definitions and interpretations of reality, whether existential, social, or technological.

His work is always held in balance between phenomenology and startling imagination. The artist is convinced that the context in which we live cannot be interpreted in a unidirectional way—it must be redefined continually by a broad variety of hypotheses regarding the transformation and “correction” of the real. His logic, therefore, is that of disorder and the destabilization of every certainty, and his mission is to charge his works with significant new possibilities with as-yet-unseen discursive potential.

In the current exhibition, one is immediately confronted by extremely lifelike mannequins made out of a synthetic material and covered with note cards, which invite viewers to transform the details according to their own imaginations. One of these figures, which is really not attractive, is set in a partially supine posture; the notices stuck to him propose a series of modifications aimed at transforming him into an ideal individual with perfect skin, an athletic body, and blue eyes.

On a small table alongside this sculpture, Barbier has set a partially gnawed forearm that seems straight from a horror movie. It makes one think of the lab of one of Dr. Frankenstein’s disciples, but the key to its reading is found in a more ironic and grotesque register.

The other section of the show is made up of huge panels comprising pseudoscientific images—graphic charts and invented biomorphic shapes created by the use of digital manipulation—that envisage a surreal world. Among the many bizarre organisms, whose anatomical structures are described with pedantic precision, a few disturbing objects stand out in particular: pear-shaped sacs that float in a sci-fi space, defined by Barbier as “poches d’existence.”




Francesco Poli
Translation by Amanda Coulson