GILBERT & GEORGE
from September 10, 2026, to April 5, 2027
The relationship between Gilbert & George and the Sonnabend Gallery began in 1971, when the famous The Singing Sculpture inaugurated the gallery's New York venue, marking the beginning of a personal and professional partnership spanning decades. Nearly twenty years after their last major solo exhibition in Italy, the Sonnabend Collection—already home to the historic work Berries (1985), on permanent display in Mantua—presents a focused and conceptually rigorous exhibition at Palazzo della Ragione.This selection of eight emblematic works, all on view in Italy for the first time, traces the key milestones of the artists’ nearly six-decade career while exploring the themes that have shaped their practice: sexuality, politics, religion, urban identity, and mortality.
The exhibition layout is structured around a direct dialogue between the artists' early days and their recent work. The Bar II (1972) is a monumental work consisting of 9 charcoal-on-paper panels from the Sonnabend Collection Foundation. Created in the early 1970s in open defiance of the prevailing abstract art of the era, it was conceived by Gilbert & George as a "gigantic letter" addressed to the world to place the gestures and spaces of everyday life back at the center of artistic inquiry. The usual bustle of the pub gives way to an atmosphere of emptiness and quiet melancholy, with the artists themselves depicted life-size in meditative contemplation of nothingness. As the exhibition progresses, Gilbert & George's inquiry turns toward the complexities of the contemporary world. With Free-Fall (from the Sonofagod Pictures series, 2005), the duo adopts a grid-like visual layout reminiscent the effects of globalisation on urban life. Here, the artists position themselves as secular witnesses of humanity as they observe the fall of the divine. The defence of tolerance and secularism against fundamentalism and discrimination emerges forcefully in Bale (from the Scapegoating Pictures series, 2013), where Gilbert & George appear masked as medieval warriors among nitrous oxide canisters collected from the streets, visually arranged like explosive devices to evoke an atmosphere of industrial brutality, war, and terrorism.
The visual impact becomes even more direct and provocative in Piss Off! (from the Utopian Pictures series, 2014), in which the artists draw heavily on street languages—from graffiti to public surveillance signage—combining signs with emphatic block-letter slogans against fascism and nationalism and in favour of homosexual revolt, highlighting ongoing metropolitan tensions between control and protest. With Beardway (from The Beard Pictures series, 2016), the exhibition presents a contemporary grotesque vision in vivid, contrasting colours, where textures of rusted wire mesh merge with the artists' faces, morphing into sharp, unwelcoming beards used as masks, reasserting their position as observers of contemporary life.
More recent works broaden the artists’ thematic concerns. In Thrice (from The Paradisical Pictures series, 2019), the focus shifts to the relationship between humanity and nature: the two artists move within a lush, psychedelic landscape that evokes a secular paradise free from original sin, symbolizing the winding journey of humankind. In Free Hk (from the New Normal Pictures series, 2020), set in their Spitalfields neighbourhood, the duo juxtaposes Chinese characters, the British flag, and icons of urban pop culture—including emojis and bags of marijuana—creating a visual bridge between the colonial past and the globalised present.
Finally, the exhibition concludes with X (from The Corpsing Pictures series, 2022), a work that plays on the theatrical term ‘corpsing’—British slang for breaking character by laughing—while also invoking the literal image of the corpse. The work offers a brutally poetic synthesis between the theme of memento mori and the idea of art as an endless performance that coincides with life itself.
A Dynamic Musuem: The Rotation of Works from the Collection
In parallel with the exhibition dedicated to Gilbert & George, the permanent display at Palazzo della Ragione is renewed through the rotation of an exceptional group of masterpieces, furthering the historic cultural dialogue between America and Europe.
After inaugurating the exhibition cycle in Mantua, Andy Warhol's Campbell’s Soup Can (Turkey Noodle) and Roy Lichtenstein's Large Spool will temporarily leave the galleries. This transition paves the way for a selection of works of major historical significance from the United States to join the itinerary: three outstanding works on paper executed by Roy Lichtenstein in the early 1960s—Airplane (1961), Man with Coat (1961), and the celebrated comic-style Knock Knock (1961)—and four iconic canvases by Andy Warhol dedicated to his famous Flowers series (1964). Together, these works offer visitors a rare opportunity to explore the genesis and graphic precision of these iconic images.
The prestigious section dedicated to Jeff Koons is enriched by the addition of two iconic works that mark pivotal moments in the artist’s exploration of materials and meaning: Jim Beam - Barrel Car (1986), whose surface evokes an almost sacred sense of purity associated with steel objects in industrial civilization; and Buster Keaton (1988), which reimagines a legend of American cinema through the age-old technique of woodcarving, historically associated with medieval religious sculpture. These two landmark works from the late 1980s replace Wild Boy and Puppy (1988) and Gazing Ball (Standing Woman) (2014).
Through a comprehensive project aimed at enhancing the permanent display while developing temporary exhibitions of high scholarly value, the Sonnabend Collection Mantova affirms its role as a constantly evolving cultural space, inviting audiences to return and discover new details and narratives of 20th and 21st-century art with each visit.
The Sonnabend Collection Mantova is an initiative of the Municipality of Mantua, in partnership with the Sonnabend Collection Foundation and Marsilio Arte. The project is supported by BPER Banca. The exhibition design is curated by unostudio.
