Le corbeau et le fauconnier

Since the early 1990s, Jean-Luc Verna has come to be regarded as the quintessential “bad boy” of the French contemporary art scene. Whether through tattoos painted on his body, make-up, ephemeral mural compositions, drawings on fabric or paper, photographs or performances, eroticism is omnipresent in his work, with death lurking in the background. His paper drawings are technically complex: an initial drawings is photocopied and transferred to a different medium, often aged paper, then colour-enhanced with lip stick. Ambiguous iconography at times supports and at times contradicts this deliberately weathered appearance: Eros stands alongside Thanatos and tragedy is associated with comedy. The history of art spans the worlds of rock music and cinema.