A draftsman, sculptor, photographer, performer and musician, Jean-Luc Verna dialogs with Alain Berland about his artistic practice.
Jean-Luc Verna's work has the particularity to link, by various references, the history of art and the history of (underground) rock music. He takes up and displaces elements of high and popular culture and traces a parallel history of contemporary mythologies. Siouxsie Sioux, his muse, changed his life the day he first saw her in an Alain Maneval’s TV show, when he was still a teenager. A large part of his works, especially his drawings, refer to this fascination that has become a source of inspiration. His body is the backbone of his singular work, which refers to phenomena of alterations (tattoos, piercing, make-up) and updates the questions of representation and reproduction.
In his photographs, his body takes poses and simultaneously embodies figures from the history of classical art and rock culture. On stage, the artist becomes a rock star with his band Apologize or a dancer in Gisèle Vienne's choreographies. He multiplies metamorphoses, going as far as interpreting all the roles in a film under the camera of Brice Dellsperger. In this way, he undoes categories and mixes genres. Not without humour, he still confuses people by giving the same title to all his personal exhibitions since 1995: "Aren't you wearing a lot of make-up?" - "No, I am not."
Jean Luc Verna had a monographic exhibition in 2016 at the MAC/VAL in Vitry-sur-Seine. His drawings were exhibited as part of the Guerlain donation to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Centre Pompidou Metz in 2014, in the 1984-1999 exhibition La Décennie, and in 2018/2019 in the exhibition Peindre la Nuit. He participated in many group exhibitions (Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels, MuCEM, Marseille, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Team Gallery, New York, Forde, Geneva, Villa Arson, Nice, Musée, d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Mac/Val...). His works are present in prestigious collections such as those of the MoMA, NY, The Judith Rothshild Foundation, Flourtown, RAM Foundation, Amsterdam, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Mac/Val as well as in many Regional Contemporary Art Funds.
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