Exhibition dates: 16th June – 18th September 2009
Artist duo George (left) and Gilbert (right) pose in front of their work “The Church of England” in Berlin, Germany
That pair of agent provocateurs are at it again!
Marcus
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Many thankx to Arndt & Partner for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
DATING
2008
Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
BRITISHISM
2008
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Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
JESUS JACK
2008
Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
ROUND FLAG
2008
Mixed media
As the international tour of the last Gilbert & George retrospective (2007-2009) did not include Berlin, Arndt & Partner are now presenting a solo exhibition of the celebrity artist duo in its gallery rooms behind the Hamburger Bahnhof. It is the first Gilbert & George solo show in Berlin for 14 years. The exhibition features a selection of 20 large-scale pieces from the Jack Freak Pictures, the largest Gilbert & George group of pictures to date. The thrust of the content is given by the colours and shapes of the Union Jack flag that dominate the bulk of the pictures as well as the recurring motive of medals, emblems and trees. In the Jack Freak Pictures the artist duo explores aspects of nationhood and of the sentient individual in the nets of society. In his essay published in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition the British writer Michael Bracewell describes these pictures as “the most iconic, philosophically astute and visually violent works that Gilbert & George have ever created …”
Gilbert & George, who met as students of sculpture at St. Martin’s School of Art in London 42 years ago, embarked on a joint artistic career that was to encompass a wide range of media from drawing to video and their trademark pictures. Further, the pair revolutionised the concept of sculpture by presenting themselves as “living sculptures” dressed in the quintessentially British tailored suit, shirt and tie. But it was their monumental trademark pictures composed of a grid like array of smaller images which they began to create in the early 70s that first brought them international fame. Figures, cityscapes, symbols, plants, bodily fluids, excrements and text interlock in pictorial messages as visually powerful as their content is provocative. The pictures, which started out in black and white and later assumed increasingly luminous, bold colours, generally also depict portraits of the artists themselves and seize on taboo subjects like sexuality, race, religion and national identity with a brash and fearless candour.
The Jack Freak Pictures again feature the bodies and/or faces of the artists. In these compositions, their bodies function as stylised representatives of the individual in society, whose relationship to social norms and categories, to national, religious and sexual identification processes is relentlessly explored and commented upon. Departing from their earlier oeuvre, some of their new pictures split the raw images into much smaller fragments before merging them into new forms. The result is a fascinating kaleidoscopic mix of the monstrously grotesque with an intricate ornamental structure reminiscent of sacred art. In ever new variations, Gilbert & George order the signs and fragments of social life they find in their neighbourhood – the multicultural East End of London – where solidarity and friendship are as visible as intolerance and marginalisation.
Press release from the Arndt & Partner website [Online] Cited 04/07/2009 no longer available online
Gilbert & George installation photographs of their exhibition Jack Freak Pictures at Arndt & Partner, Berlin
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
JESUS SUITS
2008
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Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
CHURCH OF ENGLAND
2008
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Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
POSTER DANCE
2008
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Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
REALM
2008
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Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
SPIDER
2008
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Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942)
UNION WALL DANCE
2008
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Arndt Fine Art
This gallery has now closed.
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