"London Pictures"

October 4 – November 15, 2012

Athens

Gilbert & George

Bernier / Eliades Gallery is pleased to present Gilbert & George’s new exhibition «London Pictures», on Thursday, 4 October, 8.00 – 10.00 p.m.

The terrible duo  from Britain returns to Greece three years after their last show at the Bernier / Eliades Gallery. Their new exhibition is part of their latest body of work «London Pictures», and includes a series of works created exclusively for this show in Athens. The new monumental works draw inspiration from tabloid newspaper posters which reflect the sadness and humanity of life in the west end of London.

As Gilbert & George (George: England, 1942 – Gilbert: Dolomites, 1943) have described in several interviews, London’s grandeur, mystery and drama has been a major inspiration in their determinedly confrontational and richly atmospheric art for nearly five decades. All these years, Gilbert & George have identified and outlined the moods of the city and all its messy, precious, compelling aspects of modern human condition.

«London Pictures», is a monumental body of work comprised of 292 works that let the city speak for itself, based on the 3712 newspaper- sellers’ posters, that the artists have been stealing over the last six years and then classified by subject.

The series reveal the nervous system of everyday modern society: impulses, sorrows, hopes, temper and desires of everyday urban life. Behind every poster is the truth and realism of inviolable human condition, the effects and consequences. This is the truth which Gilbert & George have described as a “moral dimension” which determines their art.

In these works details are limited, the viewer can detect fragments of streets, curtains, reflections in car windows, while the artists seem to pass like ghosts,  cautious and inactive, like their spirits have been haunting the streets and buildings, which describe the images. The darkened images, decorated with block letter text, the consistent buzz word 
highlighted in red, portray the sadness and senselessness of routine violence.

«London Pictures», explain the reality of an ultra-modern society 
with the language through the recognized voice of this society’s media. The result is an easily readable representation of the more absurd 
and violent aspects of every-day life in a modern urban society.

Being at the same time epic and monumental «London Pictures», like a big visual novel reveal the urban drama in all degrees of hope and suffering.