Gilbert & George, “Vote Beard,” from “The Beard Pictures,” mixed media, 2016 (© Gilbert & George. Courtesy the artists and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong)
Lehmann Maupin
536 West 22nd St. & 201 Chrystie St.
Through December 22, free
www.lehmannmaupin.com
www.gilbertandgeorge.co.uk
Things have gotten a bit hairy at Lehmann Maupin’s Lower East Side and Chelsea galleries. Turner Prize winners Gilbert & George are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary — Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore met at Saint Martin’s School of Art in September 1967 — with their latest series, monumental pictures of the longtime partners in red with unique items hanging from their chins, from leaves and historical figures to an anchor and a gate, furthering their dedication to “living sculpture” and “Art for All.” In most of the large-scale works, Gilbert & George, now in their mid-seventies, are physically joined, either holding hands, standing shoulder to shoulder, or connected via their beards, often surrounded by chain-link fences and barbed wire. The pictures bear such titles as “Bless This Beard,” “Beardblood,” “Beard Wars,” “Beard Honor,” “Fuck Off Hipsters,” “Vote Beard,” and “Tits & Dicks,” combining humor with fear as they take on sociopolitical mores. In his exhibition essay, Michael Bracewell writes, “Like scenes from some bizarre animated cartoon, the ‘Beard Pictures’ dominate and confound the viewer’s experience, as though alive upon the gallery wall — in the way that sacred, ritual, and ceremonial art of ancient civilizations can feel alive. A sleepless energy within the image, semi-occult, which derives from the beliefs and convictions of the artist-workers who created them. These crazy pictures tell visionary stories, housing spirits, seemingly: portent, suffering, acceptance, journeying, anger, mockery, humiliation, mischief; disappearance into a world of absurdist pageantry.” It is quite an absurdist pageantry, one only Gilbert & George could stage.
Wu Yonggang’s directorial debut, The Goddess, made for Lianhua Film Company after he worked as a designer for the Shaw brothers, is a socially conscious, emotive tale about one woman’s struggle to give her young son a better life than her own. The seventy-three-minute silent film opens with a series of shots by cinematographer Hong Weilie that follows the evening light, from the setting sun to a man on a ladder lighting a street corner oil lamp to an apartment window seen from the outside. Wu then cuts to inside the room, revealing a dressing table with lots of makeup, then a pair of dresses hanging on the wall, and a doll. The camera next rises from an empty basket on the floor to a nervous woman (Ruan Lingyu) cradling a baby. She looks at a clock; it is time for her to leave her child and walk the streets of the city to make money. It’s a melancholy scene in a melancholy film, but the unnamed prostitute is no mere hooker with a heart of gold; she is a determined yet fragile woman who will do anything for her son, Shuiping (Keng Li). Running from the police, she is helped by Zhang (Zhang Zhizhi), a low-level gangster who decides to become her pimp, regularly taking her money and threatening her future, and that of her son’s. Whenever she attempts to raise her station, particularly when she saves enough money to send Shuiping to private school, there is always something that brings her back down.
