Gilbert & George: The Great Exhibition, 1971–2016

Luma Westbau and Kunsthalle Zürich are showing an extensive retrospective of 50 years of artistic collaboration between Gilbert & George. The artists Gilbert & George have created art together for half a century. Through this an outstanding body of work has emerged that is still explosive and avant-garde today. This is now generously demonstrated in “The Great Exhibition, 1971–2016”, which allows unique insight into their visually powerful, boundless – and sometimes provocative – artistic universe. For the artists this is a return to Switzerland after 25 years, for their art was exhibited at the Kunsthalle Zürich in 1992, curated by Bernhard Mendes Bürgi.
Gilbert & George’s art is about death, hope, life, fear, sex, money, race and religion. These are complex, contradictory subjects that they portray as such: at once joyful and tragic, enthralling and horrifying, grotesque and serious, surreal and symbolic. Their goal is to “de-shock” and draw out what is already in us and present. This is about making all that takes place in this wonderful, dangerous world visible.