Jean-Luc Verna / Minotaure repenti

Actor, performer, dancer, singer and above all draughtsman, Jean-Luc Verna has established himself as an outstanding figure in the art world since the 1990s. Constantly questioning the question of identity, he never ceases to depict ambiguous characters, and his style is in line with a form of decadent symbolism that was omnipresent in Europe at the end of the 19th century. But this symbolism is permeated by a thousand other references that never cease to permeate his work: the gothic version of 1980s post-punk, the glamour of Hollywood cinema in the classical age, and even questions about gender. 

The first work evokes the figure of the Minautore, the repentant Minotaur. Unlike Picasso, for whom this figure embodied the genius of the artist devouring everything in his path, Verna's work goes against a common future that has become troubled. In his hands, a simple bouquet as a token of a possible re-enchantment of our dreams. Jules Ours, his second work, offers the sombre vision of a face emerging from the darkness to contemplate the universe. Getting Loveless tattooed on your forehead sounds like an injunction against the attitudes of our contemporaries. With this work, Jean-Luc Verna refutes the heavy pessimistic rhetoric about our times, the better to reaffirm the need for a stance that is open to the vagaries of our destinies. Stupid cupid completes the series, featuring a blindfolded cupid shooting his love arrow backwards. This humorous take on the vagaries of love stands as a maxim on our blindness to the mysteries of life. Each work, printed in an edition of 30, stands out for the absolute mastery of the line and the subtlety of the variations in black and grey to create figures that, in the end, never cease to speak of desire and love in our society.

Jean-Luc Verna (b. 1966) lives and works in Paris. After studying at the Villa Arson in Nice, where he later became a teacher, Jean-Luc Verna can now be found in the collections of major European institutions. For over 20 years, he has had numerous solo exhibitions, notably at the Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière (2024), the Parvis in Tarbes (2023), the Abattoirs in Toulouse (2021), and the Fondation pour l'art contemporain Claudine et Jean-Marc Salomon in Annecy (2021), the Musée d'art contemporain du Val de Marne (MACVAL) in Vitry sur Seine (2016), the MAMCO in Geneva (2001), and has taken part in group exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou Metz, the Musée National de Monaco, the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Musée d'art contemporain de Marseille.