The films feature actors, often the artist himself or Jean-Luc Verna, dressed as women, playing characters from films such as Psycho and Dressed to Kill. What may come across as humorous at first glace—actors with bad wigs and imperfect editing, such as tapping feet and scribbling pens that don’t quite match the film’s audio—raise questions surrounding narrative, film theory, and gender identity. Clearly, Dellsperger’s versions are not finessed objects, like their Hollywood doppelgängers. The films in “Body Double” are evasive art objects, straddling the line between appropriation and creation. Although these works are nearly copies of the original versions, the films take on new meaning and unique significance in a larger conversation surrounding the depiction of nontraditional identities in popular media.

The works in “Body Double” subvert the traditional male gaze of feminist film theory. It’s not quite clear who is the intended viewer of Dellsperger’s films. In Body Double 13 (After Saturday Night Fever), the artist is dressed as two different characters, both women, who look amorously into each other’s eyes and spin around one another while the Bee Gee’s “More Than a Woman” plays in the background. The film’s effect is bizarre and ironic, bordering on kitsch. The original narrative is disrupted, and it no longer matters whether you are familiar with the source material or not. Dellsperger is challenging tropes that pervade Hollywood cinema and shape the way that we view film. “Body Double” uses humor as a vehicle to confront broader issues of representation and identity in popular media. These are provocative works disguised as satire.

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Brice Dellsperger, Body Double 14 (After My Own Private Idaho),1999. Single channel video projection, sound, 4 min. 20 sec. Image courtesy of the artist. 

Brice Dellsperger
Body Double: Vous N’en Croirez Pas Vos Yeux
June 8th – August 1st 2014
83 Grand Street & 47 Wooster Street
New York City
teamgal.com

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Daniel Turner’s current exhibition in the space is no exception. The viewer is immediately greeted by a twin pair of sculptures resembling utilitarian workstations of some kind, but at a peculiar height and seemingly erased of their functionality. Two long, low tables sit side-by-side, mirror images of one another in the center of the gallery space. With nothing on the walls, the space feels almost emptied out, but this initial impression fades as one begins to think about the work on hand. Their pale yellow color seems to speak to a domestic origin, but their length being over twenty feet long directs one to imagine them in a larger environment, such as a factory setting.

Each piece features a brushed metal basin that calls to mind a feed trough or industrial sink, though without a drain. A residue of evaporated liquid coats the bottom of these basins, presenting a vestige of recent action, or an idea of the artists presence that resists spelling out exactly what has transpired.

The work raises many classic ideas about the value of a sculpture, making a naked case for why objects can be vehicles for thought rather than necessarily being tied to a particular use. In this way, Turner presents more questions than answers with this work. It seems to be about creating a situation where the importance lies inside the viewer’s mind as we willingly engage in this aesthetic game of cat and mouse. It’s an experience that connects the viewer to the space, returning to the work in our minds as we turn it over and over, casting speculative theory as to what it may mean. The more it makes one think, the more we are able to recognize that perhaps this mind exercise alone can be enough.

By Matthew Hassell

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Tabor Robak’s work employs computer generated imaging to create videos of invented worlds. Working in programs including Unity, After Effects, Photoshop and Cinema 4D, the artist explores a secondary, digital reality, rendered in what he refers to as a “Photoshop tutorial aesthetic” or a “desktop screensaver aesthetic.”

Tabor Robak, Next-Gen Open Beta
November 24, 2013 – January 12, 2014
Team Gallery
83 Grand Street
New York City
teamgal.com

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