PIERRE & GILLES – RETROSPECTIVE

INAUGURAL EXHIBITION OF THE NEW MOCA
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
SHANGHAI, CHINA

SEPTEMBER 26 – NOVEMBER 15, 2005

The international renown of the French artists Pierre & Gilles is no longer to be made, as shows this new retrospective of their work that will inaugurate the first Museum of Contemporary Art ever built in China: the Shanghai MOCA, directed by Mr Oscar Ho. The artists’ exhibition in Shanghai will also coincide with the end of the “Year of France in China”.

With an ensemble of 120 works, the exhibition will present a complete display of Pierre & Gilles’ creation in the past three decades (i.e. precisely 1977 - 2005). Starting with their very first work Les Grimaces it will end with the most recent works such as Les Jardins Secrets…
While Beautiful Dragon, the itinerant exhibition shown in Seoul and Singapore in 2004, was exclusively devoted to the artists’ « Asian works », the MOCA retrospective will display the entire universe of Pierre & Gilles. From the Saynètes (“Playlets”) and Petits Costumes (“Small Costumes”) to the Jardins Secrets (“Secret Gardens”), from the Dieux et Déesses (“Gods and Goddesses”) to the Saints and Pleureuses (“Saints” and “Mourners”), from the Jolis Voyous (“Pretty Street urchins”) to the Plaisirs de la Forêt (“Pleasures in the Forest”), from the marine world to the town of Paris during the German occupation in the forties in La Rose et le Couteau (“The Rose and the Knife”), we are introduced to all the facets of the life and work of Pierre & Gilles. And their scope is wide indeed: from idealist to underground society, from radical temperance to glamour and strass, from Biblical and historical references to both love and violent scenes, from portraying star system and show business icons to simply realise exotic or traditional pictures… The panorama includes amazons, starlets, young ephebes, boxers, musicians, children, demigods, monks and so forth…. All the artists’ models, whether phantasmagorical or real, will be displayed side by side in Shanghai. Without complying to any sense of hierarchy, anonymous models and friends will be shown among famed icons such as Yves Saint-Laurent (1978), Madonna (Legend, 1995) or Laëtitia Casta (Hier, aujourd’hui et demain, 2000).
This display would however be incomplete should it not offer a number of Pierre & Gilles’ self-portraits, which they qualify as « experimental » and as landmarks, and which punctuate their personal itinerary started in the early years of their career. The most famous among the first ones being Totem (1983) and Les Pistolets (“Pistols”, 1987), the last and most mysterious ones being Autoportraits sans visage (“Faceless Self portraits”, 1999) and Homo Erectus (2004).

Note: All particulars in the artists’ creative process - whether scenery, lights, costumes, make-up or the very framing of works - are their own doings. All their works are hand-painted photographs (not resorting to any numerical device). Each is also a unique piece through and through.