Alexandre and John Gailla, born in Vevey, Switzerland, 30 years ago, are characterised by a troubled talent. These twins first went through a phase of plastic differentiation in order to assert their singular identity. One studied in the United States, in San Francisco and then at the I.C.P. in New York, the other remained in Switzerland.
Once their studies were completed, they began to create works signed with their two first names.
Their “Dyptique”, portraits of the backs (works made by photographic transfer), sets the tone by playing on the indefinable and on the connections between painting and photography. A work that highlights a very contemporary feeling associating the fear of identity usurpation with the search for a formal identity. Alexandre & John Gailla develop anonymous portraits that manifest this disorder: the human face is lost, as are the markers that would allow one to represent the social position of the portrait. A gallery of almost similar individuals that goes beyond the dispossession of a clearly identifiable identity to focus on the skin.
Unlike the works of Vanessa Beecroft, the clones of Gilles Barbier or the sculptures of the brothers Jake and Dino Chapman, the bodies in Gailla’s work are not monstrous mutant constructions or avatars, still less in a hybridisation with an animal or anything else. They are above all surfaces, folds, traces of a memory of the individual. The texture of the skin is here the raw and unique material. Thus Alex and John Gailla are more in line with the concerns of an artist like Patrick van Caeckenbergh, a collector of close-up photographs of skin.
find all the information on the artists’ website: alexjohngailla.blogspot.com