Giles

Indeed he was so like a certain old memory of myself, and yet so foreign, even wild, I was put in mind of three dozen old stories wherein the hero meets his own reflection or is negotiated with by a personage from nether realms.
—John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy

Gagosian is pleased to present “Giles,” a group exhibition curated by Artemis Baltoyanni, inspired by John Barth's 1966 comic novel Giles Goat-Boy.

Uncannily Orwellian, this nihilistic Cold-War parody takes place on a university campus that is, evidently, a stand-in for the universe. The novel's main character, Giles Goat-Boy, has been raised in a barn alongside goats. One day, he realizes that he's not one of the goats but rather, human. From there, he decides that his true calling is to become “Grand Tutor,” a mysterious and vaguely defined honorific. As it happens, the meaning of “Grand Tutor” remains unclear, but it appears to be some kind of spiritual leader or messiah.

In Goat-Boy we find an alter ego of the author, one that captures the rite of passage from budding writer to maturity—and perhaps, even later, recognition and renown. At the beginning of the book, Barth includes a “Publisher's Disclaimer” and a “Cover Letter to the Editors and Publishers” in which he claims that the story of Goat-Boy is not a product of his imagination, but rather was handed down to him by a certain Giles Stoker. In turn, Stoker asserts that the book was composed by a computer named WESCAC. An absurdist postscript further amplifies the blurring of fiction and reality, placing Giles Goat-Boy in the venerable tradition of meta-fiction.