Inside the Star-Studded World of Artist Duo Pierre et Gilles
Pierre et Gilles, Let's Party (Antoine Rigolot), 2023. Courtesy of the artists and Templon, Paris - Brussels - New York.
“Pierre et Gilles” is pronounced like a single word, which is in fact perfectly reflective of their creative unity. The duo—a couple in life and in art—has been producing works jointly since 1976, creating tableaux that involve photography (by Pierre Commoy) printed on canvas. These images are then painted (by Gilles Blanchard) using iconography ranging from sailors to madonnas to Greek myths to biblical folklore. Today, their work is a beloved pillar of queer pop culture in France.
The duo’s latest exhibition, “Nuit électrique” (“Electric Night”)—on view at Templon in Paris through October 26th—surfaces scenes of lurid, immersive nightlife from the club and the cabaret. Their new body of work, created over the last two years, features neon-steeped portraits inspired by their own time partying at Le Palace, the Paris club that was the French equivalent to Studio 54. Going out affected them “more than art school,” Gilles said in an interview with Artsy. This was before the HIV/AIDS epidemic and drug overuse devastated the scene.
Pierre et Gilles, Night Club (Yannis Zegrani), 2023. Courtesy of the artists and Templon, Paris - Brussels - New York.
Pierre et Gilles, Fuck (Jonah Almost), 2023. Courtesy of the artists and Templon, Paris - Brussels - New York.
The works are influenced by film, especially the French director Guy Gilles and the 1971 queer extravaganza Pink Narcissus, directed by James Bidgood. The dazzling color scheme, interspersed with fluorescent signs for doner kebabs and WCs, is evocative of Pigalle in Paris or the Shinjuku district in Tokyo.
Beyond the thrum of glittering nightlife, the show also features a stately portrait of Isabelle Huppert as Mary Queen of Scots. While an outlier to the series, it’s an exemplar of the work Pierre et Gilles are well known for—sometimes glam, sometimes gaudy studies of public personas. The portrait was inspired by a group dinner the pair attended alongside Huppert several months ago. At the time, she was playing Mary Stuart in the Bob Wilson production Mary Said What She Said at Théâtre de la ville de Paris. The image, Mary Stuart (Isabelle Huppert) (2023), utilizes the costume from the play (designed by Jacques Reynaud), but the kitsched-up décor of a spangled red framing device and a fleur-de-lis screen was completely the artists’ own. It’s the third time they’ve worked with Huppert. “She’s a perfectionist—precise—and she always pushes us further,” Gilles said admiringly.
Pierre et Gilles, Mary Stuart (Isabelle Huppert), 2023. Courtesy of the artists and Templon, Paris - Brussels - New York.
For each shoot, the artists set everything up in their Pré-Saint-Gervais studio, quietly located just beyond the Paris perimeter. Their friends and subjects sit for them with customized scenery and costumes inspired by their individual lifestyles. “We do everything ourselves, so we’re free,” said Gilles. “We’ve always worked at home, chez nous, so there’s an intimacy and proximity with the models,” added Pierre.
The matchmaking process by which the artists cast the sitter as a historical figure or trope is based on circumstance and exchange. They cite their image of Kylie Minogue, whom they met in Sydney during the annual queer Mardi Gras bonanza, imagined as a saint to reflect her queer icon status. In the case of Sam Smith, Pierre et Gilles played on the fact that the singer’s voice is often described as angelic. Accordingly, they were depicted with a lyre, wings, and a glowing halo. Pierre called the portrait a “travail à trois”—that is, a tripartite endeavor. “Whether they’re actors or not…it’s a mix between being themselves and playing a role,” Gilles noted.
Pierre et Gilles, installation view of “Nuit électrique” at Templon, 2024. Photo by Adrien Millot. Courtesy of Templon, Paris - Brussels - New York.
They also very much showcase what Gilles calls “the beauty of homosexuality.” The 2023 exhibition “Over the Rainbow” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which highlighted LGBTQIA+ visual culture from within the museum’s collection, dedicated a section to their work, notably their cover image for French newspaper Libération celebrating the ratification of gay marriage in 2013. Inclusion in the exhibition positioned the duo as a standard-bearers of gay iconography alongside Jean Cocteau, André Gide, Jean Genet, Kenneth Anger, and others.
As for Pierre et Gilles’s longevity, it’s owed to a mix of their signature ostentation and openness to fresh inspiration. “We work in a certain style, but we evolve with the times because we’re always meeting new people,” Gilles said. “We’re not in a bubble: We meet new generations who enrich our work, and our work transforms…but we remain ourselves.” After all, Gilles remarked, “people recognize a Pierre et Gilles work.”
Pierre et Gilles, Vive la retraite (Autoportrait - Pierre et Gilles), 2024. Courtesy of the artists and Templon, Paris - Brussels - New York.
Though their clubbing days may be over, the duo’s new nightlife-centric exhibition isn’t steeped in nostalgia for the olden days. They acknowledge their own age in a joint self-portrait, Vive la retraite (Autoportrait – Pierre et Gilles) (2024), that depicts them as retirees in a tacky sunset postcard, confirming that even as they get older, they haven’t lost their tongue-in-cheek sensibility. “We do self-portraits about every two years—they punctuate our work, but we’re not Gilbert & George,” Gilles said, lightly ribbing the British artist duo.
Contrary to this work, they’re not actually retiring, either. “As long as we can work, we will work,” Gilles said. “Our life is about our meeting and our love story and a project we’ve built together.”
