Gilbert & George : nine dark pictures

The visual cosmos of Gilbert & George is manifested as an inner world in the form of a visual correspondence. It is an open message and an appeal to be alert. In their NINE DARK PICTURES, grounded in black and white , in darkness and emptiness, we see the inner places where the ideological and religious heritage of fear, enmity, inhibition and blinkered narrow-mindedness hold sway. It is here that we find the dark side - those dungeons and obliettes of mind and soul that are the dwelling places of humankind's multifarious shadiness. Instead of a single universal gloom, there is a plurality of darkness; the benighted sleep of impotence, the innermost self as the meeting-point of whispered otherness, captivity and obscurity as the motor and motivation of future action. These are the empty places - not where rhe individual has disappeared, but where the individual has been abandoned.