Body Double X

Team will present a solo exhibition of video works by Brice Dellsperger from the 14th of February through the 16th of March 2002. The gallery is located at 527 West 26th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, on the ground floor.

Brice Dellsperger’s show will be made up of three single-channel video projections. Entitled Body Double X, Body Double 15 and Body Double 17, the pieces are reconstructions of scenes (or in the case of X, the entirety) of popular films. Dellsperger’s remakes, which he began making in 1995, have taken their generic series title from the notorious Brian de Palma picture. Dellsperger’s works reconstitute segments of canonical postmodernity in their dissections of such cultural touchstones as Blow Out, The Empire Strikes Back and My Own Private Idaho.

In this New York show each piece mirrors and distorts a different original. Body Double 15 takes as its scaffold the famous museum pick-up sequence from Dressed to Kill. In this ten-minute piece the artist, dressed as a woman, plays both halves of the trysting couple. The two separate performances were layered together creating a narrative of pure narcissistic abandon where the artist lusts after his own image in the hallowed halls of the museum. In his latest piece, Body Double 17, two sisters play all of the characters in the roadhouse sequence from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The sisters, strikingly similar in appearance, disappear into one another, as it becomes increasingly difficult to tell them apart. The reading of gender, something that we take for granted in feature films, is negated, as sexual identity becomes pure confusion.

The show’s centerpiece, made over a three-year period, is Body Double X, a feature length remake of Andrzej Zulawski’s 1975 film The Important Thing is to Love. In Body Double X all of the speaking parts are played by the same actor. Jean-Luc Verna, an artist based in Nice, was photographed by Dellsperger to create a one hour 44 minute master which syncs with the original film’s original soundtrack. Dellsperger and Verna then worked together to create all of the additional performances which were painstakingly shot with blue-screen backgrounds to be later collaged into the master shots. At times Verna appears on screen simultaneously portraying a dozen different characters. Each one, however, is dressed and styled as a transvestite.

In addition to its repeated screenings at Team, Body Double X will also be screened at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City’s East Village. Located at 32 Second Avenue, on the corner of Second Street, the screenings of Mr. Dellsperger’s full-length piece will take place at 10 pm on Wednesday the 13th of February and at 10 pm on Friday the 15th of March. These shows are scheduled for the night before the show opens and then again for the night before it closes. Mr. Dellsperger and Mr. Verna will be in attendance at the screening on the 13th of February. Tickets are required for admission and are available at the gallery.

This is Mr. Dellsperger’s first solo show in the United States and we are grateful to Air de Paris for their assistance in its organization. Dellsperger’s works have been shown at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Villa Arson, the Arnolfini Gallery, Le Consortium, the Wiesbaden Kunstmuseum, and at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm. For further information and/or photographs, please call the gallery at 212.279.9219.