NAKED FOREST - 1982 300 x 250 cm

They met on the Sculpture Course at London's St. Martin's School of Art in 1967, and since then they have been living and working together in London. Gilbert & George started their work together with what one might call performance art by declaring themselves to be sculptures.
Since the end of the 1970s they have been combining their photographs into increasingly larger collages and producing monumental and colourfully bold picture compositions that are characterised by a strict conceptual regularity and that aesthetically refer to youth and pop culture. From 1980 onwards, the topics of body and sexuality have dominated the work of Gilbert & George. In addition to individual sexuality, the oversized tableaux, whose narrative structure can be read at multiple levels, treat such taboos as excrement's and sperm and stylise these taboos into picture elements. In their latest work, Gilbert & George are more open than ever about their understanding of the body both as a sounding-board for the soul and the intellect and as something that cannot be duped or deceived.