Vanishing Pictures

In the sustained greyness of these gouaches, one sensation prevails: effacement. Barely delivered to our gaze, these images gleaned from the large canvas are torn from the comfort of evidence to serve only a nebula of fading forms. Photographic overflow has migrated to a pictorial murmur. Gilles Barbier’s gouaches are informed by the furtive, frightened moment of this relinquishment. The transparency and porosity of the support assert themselves from the outset. Through dimension: the view is contained within the surface effect. But also through the paradox of its veiling. The receiver of images has almost concealed his catch. More than the situations or words evoked, a trial by disappearance instructs them on the vanity of all representation. For there is no more truth in the image than there is in the thing seen. Both are exposed through the pale coating of uncertainty. In this way, the artist has materialized the weight of contingency with the rendering of a perceptual disorder. Extinguished by color, the motif is lost in a twilight monochrome. Exhibited together, these gouaches also reveal fragments of a narrative sequence whose focal moment diffuses monotony and melancholy.

Jacques Samson in L’Émmentaliste (2011).