Fridae

French collaborative duo Pierre & Gilles will exhibit their highly stylised, sexy, glittery retouched photographic artworks for the first time in South East Asia from 17 June to 18 July.

Now in their 40s, the two known simply by their first names, Pierre & Gilles, had met, fallen in love and been creating their unique pop culture meets high art meets glamour with a generous dousing of homoeroticism characteristic style since the mid-1970s.

Known for their highly theatrical images of beautifully hunky men and female divas, the duo count Boy George, Kylie Mingoue, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Madonna, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, Yves Saint-Laurent and porn legend Jeff Stryker among their subjects.

While they conceive the concepts together, Pierre photographs the black-and-white and colour shots that serve as their base images, while Gilles is the painter who treats the images with their signature typically pastel-coloured dots that create the illusion of glitter.

The New York Times described them as "pursuing a vision of otherworldly beauty steeped in artifice and historical consciousness and charged with an erotic current that is often but not always explicitly gay."

Pierre & Gilles - Beautiful Dragon will be presented by the French Embassy and the Singapore Art Museum as a highlight of the Month of Photography, a visual arts component of the Singapore Arts Festival from 17 June to 18 July 2004.

The first Pierre & Gilles exhibition to be held in Southeast Asia, the exhibition traces the work of the artists as expressed through the images of Asia where their encounters with the continent go beyond the geographical into the realm of the imaginary and fantasy. The works in the exhibition span the breadth of their career, with early pieces from the mid seventies to their most recent works created over the last two years. Among the famous personalities whose portraits are featured in the exhibition are Madonna and Hello Kitty.

The exhibition features about 65 works specially selected from various private and public collections, appearing together for the first time in a single curated exhibition. The works for the exhibition were chosen to reflect an Asian theme and comprises portraits of models, celebrities as well as ordinary people Pierre & Gilles encountered and photographed on their past visits to Asia.

Beautiful Dragon was first exhibited in Seoul, Korea at the Seoul Museum of Art early this year before coming to Singapore. The exhibition has been specially curated for the Asian tour by Paris based curator Bernard Marcad�.

Pierre & Gilles will appear at the by invitation-only launch party of "INK Deluxe" which is co-hosted by Fridae on June 13 from 6pm to midnight. Located at Raffles The Plaza hotel, INK Club Bar is dubbed Singapore's answer to The Met Bar in London and Nirvana Lounge in Paris. Designed by renowned design firm Hirsh Bedner, the bar comprises an intimate soft space and upper deck which boasts special booth-style seating for groups of various sizes.

INK also boasts famed progressive DJ Leomeo, a disciple of Buddha Bar's Claude Challe and formerly the artistic director and DJ at the Nirvana Lounge, Paris, until he relocated to Singapore in 2004.

Fridae is giving away 20 pairs of tickets to the party as well as the opening of the Beautiful Dragon exhibition on June 16. If you would like a pair of tickets to the two exclusive events, email editor@fridae.com and tell us what you like about Pierre & Gilles' artworks by June 7.

Singapore Art Museum (71 Bras Basah Road) is open from Monday to Sunday: 10am - 7pm. Extended Hours on Friday: 6pm - 9pm. Admission is free after 6pm.