DO NOT FORGET WHERE YOU COME: "Urethra POSTCARD PICTURES" OF GILBERT AND GEORGE
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@ courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
" if you do not know where you go, at least look at where you came . Shedding of their characters, with the series "Urethra postcards pictures," Gilbert and George, beyond their customary provocation, do they not arise eventually look more serious about our condition?
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A large series of tables, horizontal and vertical, aligned next to each other. They repeat exactly the same pattern: twelve images that surround another, placed in the center, symbolizing the shape of the urethra. Below this figure, a short essay with the title and name of the work.
In "Postcard Urethra pictures, as this exhibition is the theme dear to both artists, sex, religion, nationalism ...
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| @ courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac |
"Urethra post card "falls outside the usual procedure of Gilbert and George, this staging of the person, sometimes carried to excess, where they appear, either in this eternal suit and tie or naked, in situations scabrous , fingering sex, scatological Only ... The series title is itself a hallmark of the duo. It is clear they disappear behind their works here ...
Gilbert and George built " Urethra , from a simple and accessible language that everyone can easily write: postcards, brochures, flyers. They play with elements that we all know, who are part of our everyday life. They sort of reshuffling the cards of a set of known figures, rearranging as they wish, their subjectivity.
Faced with the works of Gilbert and George, a vague feeling of confusion, ambiguity, ambivalence can take us.
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| @ courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac |
Kitsch in choosing these cards, maintaining the chromosome, the image of Epinal, the commonplaces of a country, Britain
, a city, London: monuments, soldiers of the Royal Guard, Union Jack. Platitudes that come tickle the collective imagination, our representations of a country ... At first glance, Gilbert and George often go for mischievous pranksters, playing a merry, often appearing to hide behind an egotistical marked by excessive self-representation. Self-representation, one can speak of role, which dissolved the identity of a trademark, a product.
"The hyperbolic rhetoric of kitsch and unmotivated is immodest because it reveals the familiar forms of anonymity, that is to say the progressive impoverishment of properties produced by the utterance when praxis it socializes forms. Kitsch is the result of the strain associated with this depletion anonymous deformation unbearable, unbearable, suffocating as it is the opposite of singling specific form of life Individual * cf: note
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| @ courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac |
The anonymity of the form back to our own anonymity. "Urethra postcard pictures " just tip us into the tragedy of our existence. Despite the celebration the modern world which claim to Gilbert and George (see interview), they are not fooled by this existential unease with the daily return to anonymity.
tragic because we are immersed in a daily fact of phone numbers, solicitations to eat through sex ads, referred to our loneliness ... tragic in this format, this staging of modernity, this series of paintings by this alignment of identical patterns, this accumulation covering space walls ... We feel overwhelmed, and what is presented offers little catch ... We are caught in the mirror of what we are ... These works, set next to each other, rather violently affect the uniformity modern society, and seem to resonate as much epitaphs engraved in a mausoleum. Gilbert and George carry a rhetorical iteration does, after all, only take what we create.
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| @ courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac |
Leaving traces finally here, decorum, the ornamentation which, in general, invade and proliferate in their photographs ... It remains the case ... As a strip, the process and raise the self-mockery of their characters.
It remains for us to piss, enjoying, breeding or produced by the same channel, and what we come, urethra, takes us to our inevitable and become fatal ...
* Pierluigi Basso-Fossali. thresholds of kitsch: the "logic of the bazaar" to "Redemption (apparent) in quotes." Test on ictal semiology management valuations 1 . New Instruments Semiotics [ online ]. Conference proceedings, 2006, kitsch and avant-garde cultural strategies and aesthetic judgments.
GILBERT & GEORGE
Urethra POSTCARD PICTURES
February 17 to March 19, 2011
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
Debelleyme 7 RUE, 75003 PARIS FRANCE
TEL 331 4272 9900 Fax 331 4272 6166
galerie@ropac.net
Interview with Gilbert and George made Thursday, February 17
Transversales : Where did the idea for this series, is this the hidden part of your creation? Recycling of archives? Once you delete a little?
Gilbert and George:
We have collected these documents for 6 or 7 years. Initially, these documents were feeding the series "Jack Freak Pictures" and here we decided to take these documents and transform them into works. In fact, it has long we collect such documents, since 1972, in fact ... Instead of taking pictures, we found the postcards, which was easier ... At the time, it was also easier to have a diversity of subjects (people who drink, actors, fountains ...) Now, these cards are standardized ...
All 5 or 6 years, we establish selection criteria and undertake work on the documentary aspect ... is a way for us to paraphrase modern life through these cards, these flyers ...
Obviously we establish a strong relationship also with the government, sex, religion ... The sign of the urethra We were fascinated, in each work, including those presented in this case here, there is a moral dimension ... See the urethra which passes urine, semen, apparently it might seem innocent, but fair play here 's is as if we burned the British flag, that policies clearly do not appreciate ...
We see this exhibition as an exhibition of drawings by Van Gogh or Rembrandt, for example, it is not quite the same thing in their painting but it also participates.
There is like wearing a burka, we're in the middle of the subject, between observation and participation ... We do not want to be different, we want to be like the others ... With this exhibition, we can "celebrate" the modern life ... Focus on In many respects the religious practice of sex and sex workers can go and pray, for example, raising the paradoxes ...
Transversales : What is your work here on the show?
Gilbert and George :
The issue of the series, repetition here arises as a side "relentless" as obstinacy repeat ... Phone cards, for example, are social documents that did not exist, modern life is terrible in the sense in that we are constantly repeated that a sum of numbers of registrations, numbers mobile, fax, etc ... which come to cover our identity. This work serial, these variations reflected in some way ... It is better to finally be a criminal because eventually we no longer possess a number ... It's easier ... We reprocess all this and a little emotional as archives ... Unlike Warhol who in his celebrated series somehow consumption, we celebrate humanity.
Influence also that of Tantric drawings, the same color tones are found, these works have an aura similar to Chakra ...
Transverse "you said:" Postcards are our shields and our swords, our symbols, our visions, our tombstones and our masks ... "
Gilbert and George :
Whoever comes to see the exhibition can use, read, reconstruct these cards, these flyers in their own way ... We use something already there, but to talk with another voice. Art must be visible but differently. We're back to make it visible. A work of art is like stopping time is asking a moment to reflect ... For example, if you call a stranger on the street and you stop, there are great chances that s 'recalls in his life, art is like, or so we are trying to cause ...
Thanks to Alessandra Bellavita for his help
