Gilbert & George Artist Talk & Book Signing

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburger Kunstverein and the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts are pleased to invite you to an Artist Talk with Gilbert & George followed by a Book Signing of the new catalogue, which is published on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition THE BEARD PICTURES at Salzburg Halle.

11AM Opening Gilbert & George THE BEARD PICTURES
11.30AM Artist Talk with Hildegund Amanshauser (International Summer Academy of Fine Arts) and Séamus Kealy (Salzburger Kunstverein)
followed by a Book Signing

Shuttles are available from Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Villa Kast, Mirabellplatz 2 to Salzburg Halle between 10.30AM to 1.30PM

“THE BEARD PICTURES are violent, eerie, grotesque, lurid and crazed. They show a dream-like world of paranoia and destruction and madness.
Gilbert & George take their places within the BEARD PICTURES as intense, red, staring, empty-headed and sinister versions of themselves. Their eyes are shadowed and bizarrely prettified. Mutant impish explorers or dead-headed sentinels, they seem to look at, into and through the viewer. They look possessed and serious. They look as though their spirits might have left their bodies. They look stern, absurd, imprisoned, mocking and mocked. In each picture they wear beards that are surreal and symbolic. Beards made of wire mesh, beards made of beer foam, beards made of flowers, beards comprising rabbits with snakes for tongues. Secular and sacred, the throwback emblem of hip millennial youth as well as a mark of religious faith, the beard is depicted in THE BEARD PICTURES as both mask and meaning: a sign of the times.“
(Michael Bracewell)