55 - Gilbert & George (British, 1943 and 1942)

Gilbert & George (British, 1943 and 1942) River of Life - 1982 16 hand-colored photographs 242 x 202 cm (total) - 59 x 49 cm (each) Provenance: Galerie Vega, Liège The Robert and Suzanne Pannier Collection, Bruges Published: Carter Ratcliff, Gilbert and George. Complete Pictures 1971-1985, Rizzoli, New York, 1986, p.183 Exhibited: Gewad, Ghent, Gilbert & George. New Photo Pieces, 1982 Galerie Vega, Liège, Bruce McLean - Gilbert & George, 30 March - 30 April 1985 River of Life, executed in 1982, belongs to a group of eighty-two works whose number deliberately corresponds to the year of their creation. During the preceding years, Gilbert & George expanded their photographic language through bold hand-coloured images, typically in vivid reds, greens, yellows and blues. These photographs were assembled into monumental grids whose heavy black frames became an integral part of the composition, dividing the image much like the lead cames of a stained-glass window. Composed of sixteen panels, River of Life exemplifies this ambitious format and should be understood within the broader context of The 1982 Pictures, in which Gilbert & George confronted themes of love, sexuality, violence and religion with an unprecedented directness. Seen in profile, the artists appear as cartoon-like figures, their open mouths framing a winding central form that rises towards a radiant blue disc set against a luminous yellow ground. The title evokes the biblical River of Life, traditionally associated with paradise and spiritual renewal, yet Gilbert & George deliberately detach the motif from its religious setting. Sacred symbolism gives way to a deeply personal iconography in which the artists themselves assume an iconic presence. Rather than illustrating a religious promise of redemption, River of Life presents existence as a continuous flow in which the elevated and the abject, the beautiful and the grotesque, remain inseparably intertwined.