7 September – 15 November 2015

Over the decades, Gilbert & George hobserved the evolution of their East London neighbourhood and our modern world, dealing with the perpetual flux of urban life. In these pictures, the figures are acting in a way, recalling how Gilbert & George saw themselves as living sculptures, binding societal problematics and art together with a deadly serious way of describing a world of intense emotion, past, present and future.

These pictures revealed a modern western world through Gilbert & George’s sociological environment by exploring the tensions generated by the coexistence and the interaction of its inhabitants. The pictures were populated by young people from different races and backgrounds, veil-clad Muslim women, and Gilbert & George themselves, masked in some or covered in small bomb-like canisters of nitrous oxide in other pictures, adopting different guises, sometimes appearing as shattered forms. They described, as they have always done throughout their artistic practice, our modern urban world, by tackling subjects – death, hope, life, fear, sex, money, race and religion – in an engaging and direct way.

Specifically conceived for the halls of Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin, the exhibition created a tremendous environment before travelling to several museums. A book accompanied the exhibition, inlcuding a comprehensive essay by the novelist and cultural critic Michael Bracewell.