Pierre et Gilles Retrospective opens at C/O Berlin the International Forum For Visual Dialogues |
 |
 |
| Written by B.L. McKendrick |
| Sunday, 26 July 2009 04:04 |
|
 “It’s hard to think of contemporary culture
without the influence of Pierre et Gilles, from advertising to fashion
photography, music video, and film. This is truly global art.” Jeff Koons.
The cosmos of the worldwide renowned French artist duo is a vivid, colorful world poised between baroque sumptuousness and earthly limbo. Pierre et Gilles create unique hand-painted photographic portraits of film icons, sailors and princes, saints and sinners, of mythological figures and unknowns alike. Pierre et Gilles pursue their own, stunningly unique vision of an enchanted world spanning fairytale paradises and abyssal depths, quoting from popular visual languages and history of art. Again and again, they re-envision their personal dream of reality anew in consummate aesthetic perfection. Pierre et Gilles are among the most influential artists of our time. In their complex, multilayered images, they quote from art history, transgress traditional moral codes, and experiment adeptly with social clichés. Their painterly photographic masterpieces exert an intense visual power that leaves the viewer spellbound. Over the last thirty years, Pierre et Gilles have created photographic portraits of numerous celebrities including Marc Almond, Mirelle Mathieu, Catherine Deneuve, Serge Gainsbourg, Iggy Pop, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Nina Hagen, Madonna, and Paloma Picasso. They work almost exclusively in an opulently furnished studio, where their subjects are costumed lavishly and placed before three-dimensional backgrounds. Pierre photographs the model, and Gilles retouches and hand-colors the print. The reproducible portrait is rendered unique through painting, which highlights each detail with carefully selected materials and accessories. The artist duo Pierre et Gilles (b. 1950 and 1953, respectively) have been living and working together since 1976. Influenced by Pop Art, Gilles first painted a photograph by Pierre in the year 1977. This form of collaboration between photography and painting became the trademark of their work, which has remained unique and has exercised a defining influence on contemporary photography.  By the end of the 1980s, Pierre et Gilles were depicting non-Christian
mythological figures such as Neptune, Sarasvati, and Médusa. This interest in
religious subjects was coupled with a growing fascination with secular
ideologies. Le Petit Communiste Christophe (1990), for example,
which shows a uniformed Soviet soldier with the familiar tear trickling down his
face, was created the year after the Berlin Wall fell. Le Petit Chinois
Tomah (1991), in which a white-shirted Asian man confronts the viewer
with a bloodied knife in hand, can be read as the image of a defiant China. From
a slightly different perspective, Le Petit Mendiant Tomah (1992),
centers on the grinning countenance of an anonymous beggar, whose outstretched
hand contrasts with a profusion of glittering stardust filling the air around
him. The viewer cannot decide whether the beggar’s acceptance of his fate
transcends his mortal needs or if the West’s tendency to romanticize all aspects
of the East, even its underside, is being spoofed.In their work of the last ten years, the range of subject matter and moods has further matured. Though Pierre et Gilles continue to depict celebrities, as represented in frequently startling portraits of Catherine Deneuve (1991), Nina Hagen (1993), Sylvie Vartan (1994), and Juliette Greco (1999), they are just as likely to produce more humorous images, such as the campy I Love You Dominique Blanc (1992) and the melodramatic Le Papillon Noir Polly (1995). Some of the most recent images have introduced a melancholic tone that is new for their work, as evinced by the faraway look in one of their favorite model’s eyes in Tentation Jiro Sakamoto (1999) or in the seemingly empty helmets in Autoportraits sans Visage (1999). But their most elaborate series of the 1990s, Les Plaisirs de la Forêt, comprising erotic scenes in a nocturnal forest, highlights the combination of erotic tension, elaborately executed settings, and attention to minute detail that characterizes Pierre et Gilles’s surprisingly diverse oeuvre. Visit C/O Berlin, International Forum For Visual Dialogues at : http://www.co-berlin.info/co- Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
Related Articles :
