Pierre et Gilles

The colors of time

Pierre et Gilles are returning to Brussels for the first time since their spectacular 2017 retrospective at Musée d’Ixelles with their new series, Les couleurs du temps.

 

Exhibition view, The colors of time, TEMPLON Brussels, 2023
Exhibition view, The colors of time, TEMPLON Brussels, 2023

The works are jointly created by the two artists, Pierre as photographer and Gilles as painter. The exhibition is firmly anchored in the contemporary world, opening with a piece in homage to Ukraine, La promesse, in the war-torn country’s colours. Contrasting with the seriousness of the message, Pierre et Gilles produce a gallery of portraits that are now playful, now unsettling. References to the sacred and religious icons abound. Carefully staged and more complex than ever, the portraits feature unknown as well as familiar faces, from Tahar Rahim to Silly Boy Blue.

Together the artists invent new archetypes: young apollos surrounded by pink flamingos, eroticised biblical characters, cursed lovers and nostalgic sailors.

Discreetly, almost imperceptibly, Pierre et Gilles evoke many of the questions facing society today, from sexual identity issues to the phenomena of social exclusion, religious tolerance, the war in Ukraine, global warming and pollution of the oceans. The ambiguity of their art, lying somewhere between painting and photography, illusion and realism, offers a nuanced vehicle for conveying a message of tolerance in an era torn apart by conflicts and inequalities.

La promesse (Bogdan Romanovic), 2022

Details

  • The colors of time
  • The colors of time
  • The colors of time
  • The colors of time
  • The colors of time
  • The colors of time

The artist

 Pierre was born in 1950 in La Roche-Sur-Yon, Gilles in Le Havre in 1953. They are internationally renowned artists who have been producing works together since 1976, creating a world where painting and photography meet. Their art is peopled by their friends and family, anonymous and famous, who appear in sophisticated life-size sets the artists build in their studio. They meticulously apply paint to the photographs once printed on canvas. Accomplished image creators, Pierre and Gilles have built up an extraordinary contemporary iconography on the frontier between art history and popular culture.

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