In life as on stage. For more than forty years, Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard – alias Pierre et Gilles – have enchanted and shaken up our perceptions of the art of portraiture. For this electrifying new exhibition, the famous duo invites us to a strange and offbeat evening, plunging us into a nocturnal atmosphere lit by the cold light of neon lights, mixing the euphoria of artificial paradises with the nostalgia of the Palace years. In this gallery of daring portraits, here and there we come across the emblematic figures who have inhabited their paintings for decades. Sailors, angels, thugs and poulbots populate undefined spaces, oscillating between the club, the funfair and the cabaret. Each model, whether tattooed, naked, solitary or in a couple, reflects a mixed diversity and an ambiguous, seductive, vaguely worrying youth. At the heart of this theater of images as dreamlike as they are subversive is the ambivalence of love, comparing two self-portraits, one tinged with deep melancholy showing the artists separated, while the other portrays them as perky retirees in an old-fashioned postcard setting. Works that play with the ambiguity of registers by humorously embracing the contradictions of our time, implicitly depicting a world that oscillates between optimism and disillusionment. A vision of the world that is sometimes dark, highlighted in a harsh light that never fades, transfiguring the faces of their illustrious guests: Amanda Lear, as a boulevard theater actress here playing the role of Isabelle Huppert who has become a majestic Mary Stuart. A powerful metaphor of resistance to the passage of time which levels everything, existences as well as struggles.

TEMPLON GALLERY
From September 3 to October 19, 2024
28 rue du Grenier-Saint-Lazare, 75003 - M° Étienne Marcel (4)
Tue. to Sat. 10 a.m.-7 p.m., closed Sun. and Mon.
FREE ENTRANCE