The complex and plentiful body of work of Gilles Barbier explores rational thought processes and overlapping ideas through fictional tales.
Sculptures made of organic or artificial materials, gouache paintings, drawings, photographsand objects form an ensemble examining the enigma of existence.
Out of this emerge other, falsely similar worlds from ours in which hyperrealistic characters are represented in absurd or schizophrenic situations where green plants, bananas, cheese, earthworms and cosmetics bloom in madcap tales.
For the HaB Galerie — and for the first time in France — Gilles Barbier is presenting all the Pages du dictionnaire Le Petit Larousse illustré (1966). he has completed to date. On a wide sheet of paper, barbier copies out all the definitions in alphabetical order in ink and reproduces the illustrations in gouache. Echoing this major work, which takes visitors from letters a to P, a number of the artist’s sculptures and installations will also offer “a journey into this universe of words, gouache paintings, dreams, digressions, hesitations, errors and just as many victories over time, language and meaning.”
Even if Travailler le dimanche reveals some of the secrets of gilles barbier’s work, one must certainly slip on a banana peel to grasp all of its complexity!
© MARTIN ARGYROGLO _ LVAN