Pierre & Gilles
Pierre & Gilles
The encounter between photography and painting welded the duo Pierre & Gilles together in 1976. Pierre photographs and Gilles enhances the image with touches of paint and glaze. Together they build a singular aesthetic based on popular culture derived from mythological and religious iconography. Pierre & Gilles show pop icons in staged portraits embodying 1980s kitsch. Their work, between photography and painting, is characterised by an overload of eclectic signs borrowed from several worlds. They destabilise norms and conventions by choosing their models from underground and gay nightlife.
Their portraits are based on the cult of pop idols. The models are idealised and canonised. Like gods or saints, they are forever young and immortal. “We like to idealise, but we also talk about death, the mystery and strangeness of life. There is as much gentleness as violence in our images,” they say.
Pierre & Gilles’ works in the Pinault Collection were exhibited for the first time during the “Passage du temps” (“Passage of Time”) show at the Tri Postal in Lille in 2008. In 2019, the Philharmonie de Paris held a retrospective of their work entitled “La Fabrique des idoles” (“The Idol Factory”).
Their portraits are based on the cult of pop idols. The models are idealised and canonised. Like gods or saints, they are forever young and immortal. “We like to idealise, but we also talk about death, the mystery and strangeness of life. There is as much gentleness as violence in our images,” they say.
Pierre & Gilles’ works in the Pinault Collection were exhibited for the first time during the “Passage du temps” (“Passage of Time”) show at the Tri Postal in Lille in 2008. In 2019, the Philharmonie de Paris held a retrospective of their work entitled “La Fabrique des idoles” (“The Idol Factory”).
