MULTIPLICITY OF MASKS
by Elisabeth Kley



With his multiple piercings, metallic teeth and tattooed body enhanced by prosthetic breasts, thick makeup and a variety of wigs, the performer Jean-Luc Verna resembles a post-sex-change Sophia Loren who’s decided to cross-dress as a woman. His persona couldn’t be farther from the airbrushed images of Nicole Kidman or Tom Cruise, but he enacts both their roles, and everyone else’s, in the Swiss artist Brice Dellsperger’s remake of Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 Eyes Wide Shut. Dellsperger’s riveting, 37-minute-long Body Double 22 (After Eyes Wide Shut) (2007-2010) is currently on view at Team Gallery.

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