The Shipwreck (2009-2010)

After the Cockpit and the Blender Gilles barbier developed The Shipwreck. It’s the first time this title appears clearly in his work. His brother had just died suddenly in a surfing accident, and he was devastated. The liquid element, the ocean, everything that makes up currents, flows, rolls, the watery energy that he explores even in his painting techniques, all recall an irreparable loss. This work is part of that moment when shipwreck is also a breaking, a fracturing. The format, which Gilles Barbier had often arranged in panels to translate narrative temporalities, breaks up. And these shards of paint begin to float, like so many shipwrecks. Shipwreck becomes a notion that embodies the imminence of danger and catastrophe. Faced with the unspeakable, and for the first time, the artist poured out floods of Lorem Ipsum . But shipwreck, by extension, is also the promise of reconstruction, of a new shore to land on. Reconstructing from debris, from remains, with the imagination and the fierce energy of the survivor.