StandardVision Partners with CIRCA Art to Present The Believing World by Gilbert & George on the Courtyard Marriott LA Live
In collaboration with CIRCA Art, StandardVision is currently featuring an excerpt from renowned performance artists and filmmakers Gilbert & George’s The Believing World on the large-scale LED facade at the Courtyard Marriott LA Live in downtown LA through the end of October. A specially commissioned ‘living sculpture,’ StandardVision’s feature of The Believing World is part of CIRCA Art’s larger public showcase across a global network of large-scale LED facades in cities such as London, Berlin, Milan, Seoul and Tokyo.
In characterful style and coordinated suits, the starring characters of their work are filmed reading aloud 144 hand-written statements. Deploying cryptic, fragmentary assertions, they reveal how lies and belief simultaneously play widely divergent roles in our daily lives—as the source of our identities, as a naive weakness, and as the wellspring of hope for the future. Reinforcing the friendship between the viewer and their vibrant catalogue of pictures, this October feature begins with a cosmic time-walk through Gilbert & George’s path-breaking oeuvre to celebrate their position as a distinctive and influential collaborative artist duo.
Gilbert and George met in 1967 in art school at Saint Martin’s in London, where they first developed their signature form of “living sculptures” by walking around the streets of London with their heads and hands coated with multi-color metallic powders. Since then, they have lived and worked together, their individual identities subsumed into a vision of animate sculpture, becoming representations of the universal human condition, which is a central theme in their work. Their embrace of video technology, along with their well-known photo-collage works, allowed Gilbert & George to extend their living sculptures beyond a particular time and place and broadcast their art to wider audiences, establishing their motto of “art for all.”
Shortly after art school, they moved to London’s East End, then a bustling immigrant and working-class neighborhood, which has served as their home and studio for almost 50 years. Their changing neighborhood, which has become a gentrified creative center, has significantly influenced their work. The artists often appear in their work as witnesses to life unfolding in the sociopolitical and urban conditions of this area.
Catch Gilbert & George’s The Believing World on view at the Courtyard Marriott LA Live through October 31st, and learn more about CIRCA Art, Gilbert & George, and this global initiative by visiting CIRCA’s website.
