Pierre et Gilles’ “rose pour toi, rose pour moi” at Templon, Paris: Fifty Years of Painted Photographs

Pierre et Gilles met in 1976 and have made every work together ever since: one behind the camera, the other with the brush. Pierre et Gilles’ “rose pour toi, rose pour moi” at Templon in Paris (7 November – 30 December 2026) marks half a century of that partnership with around twenty portraits made in the last two years — many of them never exhibited before.

Who are Pierre et Gilles?

Pierre was born in La Roche-sur-Yon in 1950, Gilles in Le Havre in 1953. Together they built one of the most recognisable visual languages in contemporary French art: saturated colour, glittering artificial sets, saints, sailors, gods and pop stars, all rendered with a sincerity that refuses to collapse into irony. For decades they have photographed singers, actors and friends as if they were figures in a devotional painting, and the results have travelled from record sleeves and magazines to museum walls.

Templon, one of the longest-established galleries in Paris, represents the duo, and this exhibition is both a celebration and a progress report. It coincides with a new monograph, Pierre et Gilles: Five Decades, published by INSIGHT Editions in 2026 and organised by theme.

A method that is half photograph, half painting

What distinguishes a Pierre et Gilles from a glossy fashion image is the process. Each work begins with a long period of staging: sets are built by hand in the studio, costumes and props assembled, light arranged. Pierre then takes the photograph. The image is printed on canvas, and Gilles paints over it — smoothing skin, intensifying colour, adding tears, halos, flowers or stars. Templon’s text puts it simply: in their hands “the studio thus becomes a theater.”

The result is neither documentary nor fantasy but an idealised hybrid. The paint layer removes the accidents of photography and replaces them with a deliberate, almost liturgical perfection. Seen in person, the surfaces reveal brushwork that reproductions flatten — one of the best reasons to visit.

The new portraits

The new works examine how contemporary icons are made, mixing sacred imagery, popular culture, maritime themes and a baroque visual excess. Several titles pair a role with a sitter, in the duo’s long-standing manner:

• “Pink” (Sunny Gigniac), 2026 — the image chosen for our cover, a study in rose tones that echoes the exhibition title.
• “Lady Macbeth” (Camille Cottin), 2026 — the French actress cast as Shakespeare’s most ambitious queen.
• “Maria Magdalena” (Lolly Wish) and “Saint Carlo Acutis” (Martin Tournebize), both 2026 — two takes on sainthood, one ancient, one strikingly recent.
• “Le jardin des dieux” (Owen Lindberg) and “L’Étoile noire” (Ebony Osaz), both 2026.
• “Vive moi – Hommage à Renaud” (Renan Prevot), 2025 — a tribute to the French singer-songwriter.

The inclusion of a recently canonised figure, Carlo Acutis, shows how readily the duo absorb the present into their iconography. Their saints have always been played by contemporary people.

Templon and the Marais

The exhibition is in Templon’s Beaubourg space at 30 rue Beaubourg, near the Centre Pompidou in the 3rd arrondissement, and a visit here combines easily with the gallery’s second space on rue du Grenier Saint-Lazare, where a Gérard Garouste exhibition runs over the same weeks.

Why it matters

For collectors, these are unique pieces — each print is painted by hand — from artists whose work is held in major public collections and whose market has been sustained over decades. For photographers and painters, the show is a masterclass in collapsing the boundary between the two media, decades before “hybrid practice” became fashionable. For a wider audience, it is joyful, generous art that has influenced fashion, music videos and advertising far more than most gallery work ever does. Fifty years on, the camp has become canon.

Visiting information

Templon, 30 rue Beaubourg, 75003 Paris. 7 November – 30 December 2026. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am–7pm. Telephone +33 (0)1 42 72 14 10, email [email protected]. Opening reception details have not been announced; check the gallery’s channels.

Read the official exhibition page and the artists’ page at Templon, see our exhibition listing, and browse more Paris openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.