C/O Berlin - International Forum for Visual Dialogues
Berlin
Oranienburgerstrasse 35
+49 3028091925
WEB
Pierre et Gilles
dal 24/7/2009 al 3/10/2009
daily 11 am to 8 pm

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Pierre et Gilles



 
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24/7/2009

Pierre et Gilles

C/O Berlin - International Forum for Visual Dialogues, Berlin


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BERLIN.- C/O Berlin, International Forum For Visual Dialogues, will present the retrospective of French artists Pierre et Gilles from July 25 through October 4, 2009. As only venue in Germany, C/O Berlin presents the exhibition as the first of Pierre et Gilles in fifteen years. The show comprised a total of 80 unique large-format works – from their early photographies of the 1970s to the brand new pictures that were never shown in public before.

“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.

Pierre et Gilles - Birth of Charlie VBy 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.

C/O Berlin, International Forum For Visual Dialogues
Oranienburger Straße 35/36 10117 Berlin
Opening hours daily 11 am to 8 pm
also during the Easter weekend, 1st May and Ascension Day
Admission 7 Euro/reduced 5 Euro
Groups from 8 people onwards 5 Euro/reduced 4 Euro
Annual ticket 21 Euro/reduced 15 Euro

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