Presentation
The joint presence of Gilles Barbier and Nicolas de Crécy at Art Paris is no coincidence: it brings into tension two practices that the art world likes to categorize—one on the side of the “high,” the other of the “low,” as if drawing and comics still belonged to a lesser geography. Here, on the contrary, the reliefs merge.
De Crécy contemplates the summits, capturing their slowness and breath; Barbier, for his part, probes the depths, excavating the layers of the visible. Together, they trace a line that runs from the underground to the mountain, from fragment to panorama: a single space of circulation, porosity, and drift.
Neither of them belongs to those surveyors—or castrators—who delimit the territories of art. Neither one deconstructs: they overflow. Pierre Sterckx wrote that Barbier belongs to that family of creators of overabundance, where everything contradicts itself, loses its way, disperses through excess vitality. This description could just as well apply to de Crécy: in both, imagination proliferates to the point of dissolving boundaries.
This dialogue, far from opposing two worlds, connects them. It celebrates the freedom to move between forms, materials, and degrees of nobility. Barbier and de Crécy share this way of inhabiting art: not as a domain to defend, but as a landscape to open.
EXHIBITION
Du Thursday 9 April to Sunday 12 April 2026
Thursday 9 April 2026 from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Friday 10 April 2026 from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Saturday 11 April 2026 from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Sunday 12 April 2026 from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.
PARIS | Grand Palais
Stand G2
7 avenue Winston Churchill
Paris 8e