GILBERT & GEORGE – THE PARADISICAL PICTURES
2021-05-03The pictures show Gilbert & George wandering through paradisiacal natural worlds filled with mostly expressionistically-hued fruits, flowers, leaves, and trees. Each one is
a cosmos in itself; together they form a spectacular vision of paradise that is at once lush and fantastic, with hallucinatory and psychedelic elements.
Some works find the artists symbiotically merging with the natural world. BEDWETTING and CURL feature their disembodied eyes, noses, and mouths emerging ghost-like from layers of leaves to gaze piercingly at the viewer. In other pictures, they move-sometimes awkwardly dance-through sumptuous landscapes, as in DATE STONES or TENDER, for example. DATE STONE HEADS and DATE HEADS show Gilbert & George becoming part of the plant kingdom themselves, here in the form of dates and date stones bearing their facial features. The choice of fruit is significant: While dates are associated with sensuality and are said to boost both libido and sexual desire, date stones have a look reminiscent of human excrement and feces. The artist duo has already addressed such socially taboo aspects of being human in their NAKED SHIT PICTURES (1994).
Opposite – TENDER, 2019
Exhibition runs through to August 25th, 2021
Sprüth Magers
Oranienburger Straße 18
D-10178 Berlin
Germany
