The exhibition presents the 23 large drawings that constitute Gilbert & George's work, and which are today dispersed in various museums and collections.
Gilbert & George’s work “The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting” (1971), exhibited for the first time in Italy, consists of 23 charcoal drawings on large sheets of fabric-covered paper (280 x 315 cm) and is one of the rare series of works produced by the English artists using this technique.
In “The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting”, Gilbert & George are portrayed as living sculptures in a London park (an echo of the Living Sculptures and their performances). This work makes a formal reference to the English pictorial tradition of landscape painting and, ironically, alludes to the primordial couple Adam and Eve, who are here both men, in a hypothetical Garden of Eden reconstructed in the city’s parks. The work can be read as a text through the series of images, but also as a programmatic manifesto, indicated by the titles of each of the drawings, which as a sequential whole, express the artists’ total identification with their art. The catalogue contains critical texts and an interview with the famous couple.