Philippe Favier draws minuscule figurines or borrows tiny images from encyclopedias, then paints or glues them under glass, appropriating a popular Central European tradition. His subjects are thus painted backwards; and though they require the viewer to examine them closely in order to decipher them, the glass becomes a screen that displaces the figures to far-off regions, where the eye cannot follow. Each of these little tableaux—from the series entitled “L’Archipel des Pacotilles” (The archipelago of junk, 1991–93)—placed all around the gallery—renders a solitary, focused pleasure to the