“Checkers”, 2015.

Throughout the exhibition, the game is being played. As the game progresses, Gilles Barbier moves the pawns and subtracts those that are “taken”. The arrangement of these sculptures in the space is constantly modified, their number becoming rarer, as if an invisible hand were groping around, looking for the “right hanging”. Searching for the “right hanging”, the “right installation”… Gilles Barbier is amused. In fact, one of the artist’s objectives, leaving a great deal to chance, is to show that one display device is no better than another. That all its versions are admissible, and that only the postulate that defines each of them identifies an intention. The intention here is to play with the absolute of subjectivity, often presented as legitimate, even authoritative. Moreover, in the information sheet accompanying the exhibition, he adds a final clarification:

Although I often think in negative terms, I rarely work by subtraction, preferring the cumulative “and” to the Duchampian “or”. However, I read somewhere that the art of portraiture, in its quest for truth, was supposed to rid the subject of its superfluities to reveal its innermost being. The deeper being, the deeper meaning! These ideas have always made me laugh…

A logbook provides a blow-by-blow account of the game. It was kept between August 25 and December 01, 2015. The artist insisted that only a handwritten manuscript document this moment.