Until October 19, the gallery Temple presents: Electric Night of Pierre and Gilles. The gallery sent us this text:
For over forty years, Pierre et Gilles have been creating dreamlike portraits on the border between painting and photography. With their new exhibition “Nuit électrique”, the duo embraces its longevity, its place as portrait painters of the time and pioneers of LGBTQI+ issues. However, it is always when we think we know them by heart that Pierre et Gilles surprise. With their new paintings, created over the last two years, the artists play on their status as icons to create a gallery of nocturnal and offbeat portraits.
The couple formed by Pierre the photographer and Gilles the painter have established since 1976 a unique language mixing references to popular culture and art history, at once marvelous and subversive, unusual and committed. Haunted by the artificial light of neon, their new, unpublished series possesses the light of the underworld and artificial paradises. Euphoric nostalgia for the Palace years, the mythical club with which they are so often associated, or a disillusioned look at a world where all struggles are perhaps won? Pierre and Gilles stage some of their favorite characters – the sailor, the angel, the thug, the poulbot. They are placed in undefined, shady spaces, between the club, the funfair or the cabaret. Their models, sometimes naked or tattooed, couples in love or disillusioned solitaries, form a provocative, joyful, vaguely disturbing crowd. In the midst of this gay, trans, mixed-race youth, Pierre and Gilles present two self-portraits. One, marked by a serious melancholy, shows them separated. The other depicts them as cheerful retirees, in an outdated postcard setting. By playing on the ambiguity of the registers, Pierre and Gilles humorously embrace their “camp” universe. In the background, they draw a troubled world, oscillating between optimism and disillusionment.
In counterpoint, Pierre et Gilles unveil two portraits of their long-time muses: Amanda Lear, as a boulevard theater actress, and Isabelle Huppert, as the majestic Mary Stuart. Both illuminate by contrast the originality of Pierre et Gilles’ new work on light. The treatment of artificial, raw lighting, which never declines, but transfigures beings, is one of the most radical aspects of their recent practice. It can be read as a powerful metaphor for resistance to the passage of time that levels everything, existences and struggles. What kindness has the LGBTQI+ community managed to gain after more than half a century of societal advances? What place and what consideration for today’s marginalized people?
Pierre and Gilles: Electric Night
Until October 19, 2024
Temple
28 Grenier-Saint-Lazare Street
75003, Paris
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-7pm
www.templon.com
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