Banana Head, 2018

Gilles Barbier   Emerging artists

Gilles Barbier de Preville or Gilles Barbier, was born on the 6th of February 1965 in Port-Vila in the Condominium of the New Hebrides (Today Vanuatu), he is a French contemporary and plastic artist that lives and works in Marseille.

He arrived in France at this majority, and studied at the Letters Faculty of Aix-en-Provence and then at the Beaux-Arts School in Marseille-Luminy. In this town in 1992, he participated to the emergence of La Friche Belle de Mai through the creation of Astérides, an artist residence.

He is discovered when he realized large copies of the dictionary with gouaches. This type of exercise, or punishment after a lack of inspiration, created an unusual artwork.

The artist's techniques are various: sculpture, drawing, photography, moulding, most of the time in large formats or installations. Enemy of logic and definitive truths, his artwork is based on the principals of doubts, the ambivalence and multiplicity of meanings. His work is not defined as critical or an issue, but more as a variety of possibilities.

Gilles Barbier created an entire family of wax clones in his own image that offer, in a burlesque approach, a reflection on the body. If he always uses his own body, the reason is above all technique: he always has his own body. The moulding avoids him to interpret. His work makes reference to comics or science fiction (a sort of shared art) as well as painting and philosophy (highlighted disciplines).