ART CITIES:Budapest-Gilbert & George
For nearly five decades the art of Gilbert & George has created a visceral and epic depiction of modern urban existence. At its centre are always the artists themselves, who have dedicated their adult lives to their calling as ‘”Living Sculptures”, witness participants within the moral and vividly atmospheric world of their vision, as it is revealed in their art.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Ludwig Museum Archive
“Scapegoating Pictures for Budapest”, Gilbert & George latest exhibition is on presentation at Ludwig Museum in Budapest. Over the decades, Gilbert & George have observed the evolution of their East London neighborhood and our modern world, dealing with the perpetual flux of urban life. In these pictures, the figures are acting in a way which recalls 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, as well as its past, present and future. With their appearance, they communicate about timeless human phenomena through testing the boundaries of existing taboos and artistic conventions. They do not separate their art from their lives; their provocative and shocking artworks are characterized by an intense communication with their audience. The works of the exhibition, all from 2013, reveal a modern western world through their sociological environment by exploring the tensions generated by the coexistence and the interaction of its inhabitants. The pictures are populated by young people from different races and backgrounds, veil-clad Muslim women, and Gilbert & George themselves, masked in some pictures or in some others covered in small bomb-like canisters of nitrous oxide also known as “whippets and “hippy crack”, recreationally inhaled to induce euphoria, hallucinations and uncontrollable laughter, adopting different guises, sometimes appearing as shattered forms. They describe, 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.
Info: Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Komor Marcell u. 1, Budapest, Duration 8/7-24/9/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00 (24/7-9/8/17) or Tue-Sun 10:00-20:00 (10/8-24/9/17), www.ludwigmuseum.hu
