Nick Hackworth

Gilbert and George New Horny Pictures, White Cube

Essays & Reviews Evening Standard

Erectile dysfunction is the only plausible response to this particular set of horny pictures. Initially, however, it looks as if Gilbert and George, ever the dapper duo, will succeed in having their wicked way with you. The large, high, well-lit main gallery is filled with a blaze of red and yellow that emanates from massive works that stretch the length of the gallery and fill the far wall. Only the most frigid viewer would fail to be immediately impressed. But try as they might to seduce you with the size and colour of their pieces, G&G fail, principally because they ignore the most basic dictum of the glossy lifestyle rags, that it’s not the size of what you’ve got that matters, but what you do with it.

As it is, G&G use one format throughout. In each work they superimpose a black grid on a bright yellow or red background, creating a series of boxes of equal size. A black-and-white rent-boy advertisement sits in each box, sometimes framed by a thick, black circle. Each ad is in the same sans serif type. And, in every piece, the photographic images of G&G preside, their impassive faces staring out from a sea of corruption.

Each piece is based on the grouping of the ads around a common feature. Named, a huge piece more than three metres high and 15 metres long, displays 90 ads, each beginning with a name. I Am, the other massive work, contains ads that begin descriptively, such as “Blond”, “Horny” or “From Hong Kong”. Different groupings make up different pieces.

There is, then, an overwhelming sense of uniformity, both within each piece and through the body of work as a whole, and it is this uniformity that proves the biggest turn-off. Every piece makes the same point, induces the same throwaway feeling of the dark, sexual underbelly of the city being glibly exposed for our titillation.

Yet, of course, it is also from such repetition and uniformity that these pieces derive what power they have. In Named, every one of the 90 ads is numbered, and in their regimented order there is a far-off echo of the endless fields of crosses from the cemeteries of the First World War, a sense of shards of humanity trapped behind crass descriptions, be they Black Stallions from Peckham or Sergeants of the Grenadier Guards.

Until 15 July; White Cube2, 48 Hoxton Square, N1; 020 7930 5373