Gilles Barbier

In Gilles Barbier’s latest exhibition, a panorama of gouache drawings combines fantastical images of body parts, flying machines, surfers, sharks, and planets with humorous, acerbic bits of text. One phrase in particular—“tubular, intestinal delirium”—could serve as the title of the show, which also includes several new sculptures. The faceless figure in The Prince of Bellies (all works 2003) is parasitically inhabited by a worm, who recounts the tale of his acquisition of language from a window built into the prince’s obese paunch. The body in all its Rabelaisian messiness is omnipresent here, but so is the history of art. The Conquest of Space, for instance, is a wry commentary on Minimalist sculpture. Faux-cheese tiles lined up on the floor recall the pocked surface of the moon (which, as we all know, is made of that very substance) as much as they do the work of Carl André. Business Architecture, a clear Plexiglas outhouse, ups the ante on R. Mutt’s Fountain. With its references to penetration, expenditure, verbal errata, ingestion, and other corporeal matters, Barbier’s latest work generates a libidinal economy all its own.