When you thought of Brice Dellsperger, it means first and foremost thoughting of his love of cinema, which the artist very early on applied to the field of visual arts. It means thoughting of protocols, which he has followed for 30 years, and of the challenge of reinventing forms and references, a challenge he takes on with ease. It is also, of course, about camp aesthetics, collage, and representation.
The Body Double series evokes the pleasure of recognition, the humor born from the disjunction of replayed scenes, and production processes that remain closely tied to life, off-screen.
In Quitte ou Double the videos run in loops, with a duration that is never excessive (6–7 minutes at most). On this subject, the artist states that he feels connected to the “aesthetic of the music video.” Let’s join the dance.
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Body Double 31 appears twice in the exhibition. The interrogation scene from Basic Instinct by Paul Verhoeven is here reproduced by Brice Dellsperger, featuring his friend Eva Svennung, her face heavily painted. The illusion of direct access to the screen test (the original “audition tape,” available online), staged at the entrance on a cathode screen, points to the complexity of the artist’s practice, which weaves scenarios of contemporary art by imagining the exhibition space as one might step onto a film set.
The chosen moment frames the rising tension just before Sharon Stone, in the original scene, concludes with her iconic leg crossing. It highlights how five policemen and investigators, figures of male authority, attempt to make her confess to a crime and are thrown off balance both by her composure and by that simple gesture. The inversion of power is tangible here, and through this scene Brice Dellsperger also brings out the brilliance of the dialogue.
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Here the artist presents a work created with students from the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 2015. About ten of them reenact the dialogue of a scene from Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, in which covers of gay magazines suddenly come to life. The models launch into a conversation about fame and money, within a context that questions social, sexual, and financial marginality. The original film, avant-garde and now cult in queer circles, also echoes Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V and blends fiction with science fiction. These speaking magazine covers also evoke the notions of madness and hallucination. The performers replay this dialogue in a loop, each character made up and costumed to further emphasize the unsettling shifts in gender roles and appropriation.
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In this forest of psychedelic figures, a single actor, Jean Biche, embodies an entire fitness room, set to a reworked version of Whitney Houston and Jermaine Jackson’s Shock Me (1985). Jean Biche is Jamie Lee Curtis, John Travolta, and the crowd of extras. He mimics the suggestive gestures conveyed through the expressions and glances of the two main characters.
For Passages, the artist reworked the video, doubling it to create a giant moving wallpaper, a kaleidoscope centered on fragments of bodies and faces. Adapted to the large wall of the art center, Body Double 36 evokes the joy and vitality of bodies in motion, in a hallucinatory loop that saturates the senses.
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Body Double 38 slightly changes from the artist’s usual protocols. Two scenes, drawn from artists more closely tied to the visual arts than to cinema, are at the origin of this work, which runs in a loop on a vertical screen in the winter garden.
Eva Svennung performs the actress from Kenneth Anger’s experimental film Puce Moment (1949), who then becomes Wonder Woman, sampled by Dara Birnbaum in Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–1979).
Here Brice Dellsperger creates a collage of two experimental films, bringing their subjects closer together through visual and thematic analogy, to denounce the stereotypical sexist aspects embodied on one hand by 1920s Hollywood and on the other by the television system of the 1970s.
For several years now, between film shoots, Brice Dellsperger has been laying down in gouache on paper references drawn from his filmography, which here complete the exhibition. The stars and their animals, along with reproductions of magazine covers, recall the aesthetic of the fanzine, printed spaces dedicated to uncompromising creative freedom, where characters often become icons. In this way, Brice Dellsperger reappropriates the figures that inspire and surround him, like a family he creates for the public.
The references are thrown together here in a complex queer and punk cacophony, presenting layered visuals and exuberant collages that leave a lasting impression…
Maëla Bescond
Discover several video installations at Passages during the exhibition Quitte ou Double, from September 20 to December 13.
Another part of the project is presented at the exhibition Futurs intérieurs, from July 5 to December 14, 2025, at the contemporary art center La Synagogue de Delme. This partnership is made possible through the Mieux Produire Mieux Diffuser program of the French Ministry of Culture.
An artist’s catalogue will be published at the end of 2025 by Mousse Publishing, with the support of Mieux Produire Mieux Diffuser, the MRAC Sérignan, the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, the Fondation Agnès b., and the gallery Air de Paris.
Brice Dellsperger according to Evan Moffitt – Double Trouble – Website of the Fondation d’entreprise Pernod Ricard
