PIEERE ET GILLES : DOUBLE JE Aperture May, 2008

P20

Complexity was clearly on the agenda in this very well-conceived show, which emphasized both the diversity and the relevance of a controversial body of work always teetering on the edge of High Kitsch. Political commentaries ( colorful but not very convincing images about poverty, environmental crisis, the war in Iraq and abused women, for example ) were juxtaposed with the better-known pissing gardeners, dark-skinned boys, and bilical characters. The viewer was asked to see profundity in the sensuality and the glamour, to envisage ( as Paul Ardenne writes in the accompanying book) "another possible vision of humanity ...where love above all will reign master of the world." In other words, we were asked to view this exhibition as a new, utopian vision of the Family of Man - The Family of Erotic Man, one might say - where beauty will conquer all , level all differences , and heal all wounds. The audacity of such an ahistorical ( and over - blown ) interpretation renders one speechless, but it did lend a certain weight and poignancy to an oeuvre often seen as unremittingly lightweight and one-dimensional.