PIERRE ET GILLES

Having met in 1976, photographer Pierre Commoy and painter Gilles Blanchard have been partners in life as in art. They very quickly forged a shared artistic language, singular in kind: photography and painting merge on a single canvas to yield symbolic, idealized portraits. Their painterly intervention lends each image its radiance and saturated color, in the manner of the earliest photographic retouching, when color was applied by hand, and makes every portrait a unique piece. Each work is born of a long process of staging: sets, costumes, props, and lighting are all designed and handmade in the artists’ studio just outside Paris. The studio thus becomes a theater in which the setting tells the story of its sitter, sometimes famous, often anonymous or close to the artists, but always transfigured.

With rose pour toi, rose pour moi, Pierre et Gilles continue their exploration of how contemporary icons are made. Sacred figures, stars, pop creatures, fictional characters, and friends of the artists come together in a world where reality tips into the realm of dreams.

“Pierre et Gilles do not seek to impose a narrow view of things, but to interrogate society through the fantasies that circulate within it. Their work is grounded in reality, yet approaches it through dream, which Freud said proceed by condensation and displacement; in their hands, photography becomes a psychic process.”[1]

Fashion designers, DJs, actors, drag queens, models, and friends of the artists rub elbows with figures drawn from sacred iconography, maritime imagery, the oneiric, and the baroque. The exhibition reveals the full breadth of their world, from popular devotion to pop culture, and presents previously unseen works including Lady Macbeth (Camille Cottin), 2026, Maria Magdalena (Lolly Wish), 2026, L’Étoile noire (Ebony Osaz), 2026, Saint Carlo Acutis (Martin Tournebize), 2026, and Vive moi – Hommage à Renaud (Renan Prevot), 2025.

The monograph published by INSIGHT Editions brings together the work of Pierre et Gilles for the first time according to a thematic classification. Each section opens with an introduction by Laura-Ève Lambert and is enriched by texts from figures such as Édouard Louis, Sylvie Vartan, and Amanda Lear, as well as by anecdotes from those who have stood before the artists’ lens.

[1] Laura-Ève Lambert, Pierre et Gilles – Five Decades, (INSIGHT Editions, 2026), p. 11, cat.

Courtesy Templon.