Pierre et Gilles. Rose pour toi, rose pour moi

Met in 1976, the photographer Pierre Commoy and the painter Gilles Blanchard form a couple in life as in art. They quickly invented a common artistic language, unique in its kind: photography and painting merged on the same canvas, creating symbolic and idealized portraits. This gesture of painting, which gives the images brilliance and saturated colors in the way of the very first photographic retouchings where the color was applied by hand, makes each portrait a unique piece. Each work is born from a long staging; sets, costumes, accessories and lights are designed and handcrafted in the artists’ studio in the Paris region. The studio thus becomes a theatre where the decor carries the story of its model, sometimes famous, often anonymous or close to the artists, but always sublimated.

With “pink for you, pink for me”, Pierre and Gilles continue their exploration of the manufacture of contemporary icons. Sacred figures, stars, pop creatures, fictional characters or close artists meet in a universe where the real switches to the dream.

“The objective of Pierre and Gilles is not to impose a narrow vision of things, but to question society from the fantasies that circulate there. Their work is based on reality, but he approaches it by the dream, which Freud said he proceeds by condensation and displacement – photography, with them, becomes a psychic process [1].”

Stylists, DJs, actors, drag queens, models and friends of artists rub shoulders with the figures of iconography of the sacred, marine imagery, onirism, baroque. The exhibition makes visible the full extent of their universe, Popular Devotion to Pop Culture, where the public can discover unpublished works such as Lady Macbeth (Camille Cottin), 2026, Maria Magdalena (Lolly Wish), 2026, The Black Star (Ebony Osaz), 2026, Saint Carlo Acutis (Martin Tournebize), 2026 or Vive moi – Tribute to Renaud (Renan Prevot), 2025.

The monograph published by INSIGHT brings together for the first time the works of Pierre and Gilles according to a thematic classification. Introduced by a text of Laura-Ève Lambert, each set is enriched with writings of personalities like Edouard Louis, Sylvie Vartan, or Amanda Lear, as well as anecdotes of those who passed before their goal.