21/3/2002
Gilbert & George
Portikus, Frankfurt
At Portikus, Gilbert & George display a new series of photographic works entitled 'Nine Dark Pictures', which in terms of content concentrate very strongly on the relationship of the individual to religious, social and political conflicts.
NINE DARK PICTURES
George: "We live according to very normal rules. We behave decently. We
want to achieve something in our lives. We are not interested in art,
but in life. We are normal, uneducated, conservative, plain and
ordinary."
Gilbert: "We are liberal and radical. We love extremism. But it must
move within a system, an order."
George: "We're not opposed to the establishment. After all, we want to
work within this system."
Gilbert: "We are working on a Gesamtkunstwerk. And we are working on it
together, from beginning to end. We are a one-man show. We say: we are
one person."
(Interview with Klaus Ahrens, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, No. 17,
04/26/1991, p. 32-41)
Gilbert & George met in 1967 when they were students in London and have
been working together ever since. In the late '60s, they appeared in
public or in exhibitions as "living sculptures" or "singing sculptures".
Since these early performances, Gilbert & George have been developing
their pictures based on images of their own bodies or their own
portraits. Time and again, they display their own identity in relation
to various aspects of society, culture, religion, sexuality and
politics. On the one hand, Gilbert & George always appear as anonymous
representatives of the social individual, on the other, however, it is
precisely by standardising and stylising their own persons that they
have succeeded in making their own image as well as their first names an
artistic signum. As icons of British art, Gilbert & George have been,
and still are, extremely influential for the younger generations of
artists, and their approach of a readily comprehensible pictorial
language as well as a radical idealism continue to count as
path-breaking.
At Portikus, Gilbert & George display a new series of photographic works
entitled "Nine Dark Pictures", which in terms of content concentrate
very strongly on the relationship of the individual to religious, social
and political conflicts. The pictures make use of a popular symbolism of
political and religious protest, show architecture as an expression of
social differences and are thus the declaration of a radical
understanding of democracy.
The exhibition is presented by Schroders Private Bank.
Exhibition opening on Friday, March 22, 2002, 8:00 p.m.
Portikus
Schoene Aussicht 2 D-60311 Frankfurt