My Living Room is a Dragster

Gilles Barbier’s work addresses contemporary life with wry humor and an eye for the absurd. My Living Room is a Dragster is a photograph of Barbier’s installation piece of the same title. This image is the only remaining document of this installation. The photograph’s monumental scale allows the viewer to observe the contingent details of this installation and read the sheets of handwritten text placed seemingly at random upon the banal trappings of Barbier’s “living room.” The sheets of text function as “reality correctors” that break the fourth wall and directly address the viewer. The handwritten text on each sheet guides the viewer through a series of imaginative exercises that invite the viewer to imagine the room and its objects as parts of a dragster. Though the titular dragster remains conspicuously absent in this image, one might consider the texts as stand-ins for the dragster that will be visualized within the viewer’s imagination. Although the “living room” is unpopulated, the imperfections of the handwritten texts introduce a personal, human element to a scene inhabited by objects.

Gilles Barbier was born in Vanuatu and currently works in Marseilles, France.