About the Work
Painting as a space of possibilities, as a delimited system, as an open picture: painting that – apparently without the detour via the artist’s subject – reaches the support medium, be it through the direct application of paint from the tube, the spray can or – as is the case here – with the aid of a stencil. In recourse to the composite systems that preceded all painting practice, Barré conceives his work as the palimpsest of a grid that extends beyond the picture’s surface. Embedded in several layers of thin white paint, this grid connects the images of the series. Barré reveals the picture in the overlapping stages of its creation, without the viewer being able to fathom the system itself. Thus, it is more the moment of searching than the finding that becomes the central quality of painting here. Its self-centredness is not a metaphorical reference to an underlying theme, but seeks to make a statement about painting as such.
