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259 – Le collectionneur

2004

Gilbert Garcin

Photography

50 x 60 cm Edition 11/12

Black-and-white Baryta print

There’s a Hitchcockian atmosphere about these pictures within pictures. Gilbert Garcin appears in his own existentialist photos with tongue-incheek titles. Meeting midway between humour and angst, these small fictional self-portraits (in which Mrs Garcin has also featured on occasion) serve as a pretext for a powerful allegory of the human condition. Allusions to art history, Calder, Serra and Morellet are all present.

Text : Carole Vantroys.
Translation : Pamela Hargreaves.
Gilbert Garcin
France
Born in 1929
Born 1929 in La Ciotat.
Lives and works in Marseille

Some things improve with age. Former manager of a light factory, Gilbert Garcin began his brilliant career as a photographer after taking his well-earned retirement at 65. The situations he presents in his small Surrealist installations all have one thing in common: a highly developed sense of the absurd and self-mockery. Garcin could easily be the spiritual son of Magritte or a cousin of Jacques Tati’s character, M. Hulot. Assembled with the help of cardboard, glue, sand, cut-up photographs and Meccano pieces, his magical, minimalist enactments are also ironic references to the reign of virtual images.


Text : Carole Vantroys.
Translation : Pamela Hargreaves.

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