Pierre et Gilles. Rose pour toi, rose pour moi

Pierre et Gilles celebrate 50 years of artistic collaboration with ‘rose pour toi, rose pour moi’, an exhibition of some twenty portraits made over the past two years. The occasion also sees the publication of Pierre et Gilles: 50 ans de création, a major monograph covering five decades of their work, published by INSIGHT.

Met in 1976, photographer Pierre Commoy and painter Gilles Blanchard form a couple in life as well as in art. They very quickly invented a shared artistic language, unique of its kind: photography and painting merge on a single canvas, creating symbolic, idealised portraits. This painterly gesture, which gives the images brilliance and saturated colours in the manner of the very first photographic retouches, when colour was applied by hand, makes each portrait a unique piece. Each work is born from a long staging: sets, costumes, props and lighting are designed and made by hand in the artists’ studio in the Paris region. The studio thus becomes a theatre where the set carries the story of its model, sometimes famous, often anonymous or close to the artists, but always sublimated.

With ‘rose pour toi, rose pour moi’, Pierre et Gilles continue their exploration of how contemporary icons are made. Sacred figures, stars, pop creatures, fictional characters and friends of the artists come together in a world where the real tips over into dream.

‘The aim of Pierre et Gilles is not to impose a narrow view of things, but to question society through the fantasies that circulate within it. Their work is grounded in reality, but approaches it through dream, which Freud said proceeds by condensation and displacement – photography, with them, becomes a psychic process [1].’

Stylists, DJs, actors, drag queens, models and friends of the artists rub shoulders with figures from sacred iconography, maritime imagery, the dreamlike and the Baroque.