Pawns

Better In the years that followed, Barbier worked to bring to life the abundance and variety of projects that were, so to speak, exploding. At the end of 1994, he attempted to formalize his singular approach with an installation entitled “Comment Mieux Guider Notre Vie au Quotidien” (How to Better Guide our Daily Life). The number of pawns increased to four, to compensate for the multitude of artistic scenarios taking shape. Gilles Barbier opted for a hyper-realistic representation in wax. At the time, the “Pawns” still wore a handle on their backs to make it easier for them to move around the checkerboard of possibilities.

Little by little, the pawns will abandon the checkerboard, the handle on the back and the protocol of the original game, to embark on a journey through the social and cultural corpus, through incarnations as multiple as they are extravagant. Through their identical replication, they remain attached to their original model, the artist: facial features, hands and feet faithfully molded onto this docile subject. The result is a journey through time, with the artist’s double, now a model, accompanying him as he ages. Although 30 years now separate the first “Pawns” from the last, the gap continues to widen, further disturbing the relationship to the same.