The Gilbert & George Centre - Opening 1 April 2023

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

Underpinned by the artists’ ethos ‘Art for All’, The Gilbert & George Centre is a permanent home for Gilbert & George’s artistic legacy, presenting one or two exhibitions a year and providing visitors with the widest possible access to their historical and new pictures, as well as a place for research and scholarship on their practice.

Visitors will enter through a secluded cobbled courtyard and into a reception area reminiscent of the artists’ restored Georgian home and studio on nearby Fournier Street. From there the Centre spans three state-of-the-art exhibition spaces of differing scales and feel, extending over three levels and totalling 280 m².
 

Our art is the friendship formed between the viewer and the pictures. — Gilbert & George
 

To mark the inauguration of the Centre, the first exhibition will be THE PARADISICAL PICTURES, shown in #london for the first time. In these works the artists inhabit a disquieting vision of a heavenly place imagined as an enchanted forest or overgrown park. The psychedelic landscapes are made weird through the juxtaposition of lurid colours, oversized fruit and rotting flowers.

We will start with THE PARADISICAL PICTURES because we realise that most #people think of paradise as ‘the after party’ and we think of this as the pre-cum party. — Gilbert & George

From picture to picture, Gilbert & George are subject to biomorphic alteration as they are transformed into vegetable states – a turn of events that would be cartoon-like and absurd were it not so equally sinister. Their dead yet watchful eyes stare sleeplessly from grotesque detritus of fruits and flowers; from masks of dead leaves – details of spirit faces emerge, as the artists themselves are seen first pursued by unseen wonders, or horrors, then finally exhausted, worn out, in a sleep that seems to promise no rest.

Designed by award-winning #sirsarchitects in collaboration with Gilbert & George, the overall design approach considers the sustainability of the building in its broadest sense. The space is embedded with two clear aesthetic visions as it displays a sensitivity to the conversion of the 19th-century building, in keeping with the artists' view of London's architecture as the legacy of the city, while creating contemporary exhibition spaces well-suited to the presentation of their art.

The Gilbert & George Centre will initially open Friday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm with additional opening days extending into 2023.