Teleportation Gate (out of order).

The Gate’s formal proximity to a work of minimal art makes it a natural fit for exhibitions. Here, Gilles Barbier plays on several levels of confusion, placing the visitor in a double bind. Not only is the object not a work of art, presenting itself as a technological object, but as such, it doesn’t work either. One could say, like Panamarenko’s flying machines, the following: What you see is not what you see and not what you think! The artist has this to say about this strange status:

I place this gate everywhere, whenever I can. It’s neither a work of art nor an object of use – it’s broken down for eternity – but refers to a mind game I’m particularly fond of. As it multiplies, it weaves a virtual network of connections on a global scale. It thus accompanies the expansion of my own work, in all its diversity and ruptures. But more profoundly, this mental device helps me to evoke the promise of cohesion, however virtual. The promise of repair, which would restore a future integrity to the great shattered body of my work.

Extract from an interview with Dong Eun Ma, 2016.