One of the largest works in the exhibition features a contemporary version of Charon, the ferryman, who escorts the dead across the river to the entrance of Hades’ realm in exchange for an obol. In his rendering of the story, Baribeaud elegantly conveys the eternal wait of the dead, as well as the ferryman’s permanent state of waiting into a modern setting. Instead of the canonical image of a grim old man in a dark fisherman’s apron, the artist has placed a sexy young man in the smart entryway of a mid-century building. It remains unclear whether Baribeaud’s Charon is waiting for cargo or whether he is, indeed, waiting to gain entry into the netherworld himself.

In his Minotaur Baribeaud depicts a contrary form of masculinity. A male nude seems to transform into the man-eating creature while striding through a door. The next of Baribeaud’s mythical figures that we encounter is lasciviously lolling on wrinkled bed sheets: it is the Spartan princess Penelope, wife of Odysseus. During her husband’s two decades of absence, she cunningly puts off her many suitors, under the pretext that she could not respond to any advances until the shroud for her deceased father-in-law was finished. Every night, however, she unraveled her day’s work of weaving, enabling her to fend off the hopefuls while Odysseus wandered the world. This cloth, illustrating several episodes in the Odyssey, covers the protagonist. Like in the sweetly expressive Viennese Jugendstil compositions Baribeaud’s Penelope is shown in an expressive pose, set against an almost monochromatic background, whose deep blue alludes to the Odyssey. Baribeaud even picks up on the theme of the couple’s long separation in the embroidery of a moon cycle that frames the piece. With this delicate craftsmanship the artist – as is the case in Medusa – abrogates the distinct separation between the so-called fine arts and applied arts. This is also true for works like Daedalus and Danaë in which the artist applied gold leaf.

Baribeaud’s masterful fusion of ancient myths and references to modern art movements, such as Jugendstil or New Objectivity, culminates in his large-format painting Penthesilea. The protagonist succeeds in evading our gaze. She is in the process of getting changed, yet whether she is dressing or undressing remains unclear – as does the question of ownership of the conspicuously placed shirt in front of the folding screen. The screen is decorated with a scene from the so-called Amazonomachy – the mythical battle during the Trojan War between the Greeks and the Amazons, the female warriors. The painting that served Baribeaud as a starting point for this work is Henri Matisse’s The Pink Studio. Showing the light-flooded studio of the fauvist painter, The Pink Studio marked a change in perspective in its author’s career. The painting was done only a few years after Matisse left Paris and moved to a new home in the rural setting of Issy-les-Moulineaux. Here, art history would be written with the iconic painting The Dance. Even though the estate was just a few kilometers from Paris, the moderate change of location brought with it a new perspective on the seemingly familiar.

Through this combination of diverse references, Baribeaud has created a setting for Penthesilea that once again defies any clear assignment to a particular epoch. As in his other works, this approach allows him to create a stage populated with universal characters. In the case of this painting, the artist has lined up a cast of female types from a variety of eras and cultural contexts: there are the combative Amazons, the Virgin Mary, Matisse’s models, and the Hindu goddess of war. Even the second of the Matisse paintings Baribeaud cites, hanging on the left behind the screen, addresses the role of women in society – ironically through their absence, as it depicts only Muslim men. Baribeaud’s protagonist finds herself in the midst of these role models; in alluding to or rejecting these stereotypes, she is forced to carve out a genuine understanding of herself. The considerably smaller but equally colorful The Navel of the World is a variation of this composition.

Baribeaud’s new paintings and watercolors are not contemporary illustrations of Greek and Roman myths. Instead, the artist uses these traditional narratives to create projection surfaces and effective stages, upon which he assembles a cast of contemporary figures who experience human dramas that have remained unchanged for millennia. All these works are about multifaceted characters, relationships, and the individual’s place in society. They are about loneliness, life, and death. The basic heroic stories may be ancient, but the drama could not be more contemporary.