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New Masks, New Worlds
It’s a useful reduction to say that both Jonathan Meese and Rinus Van de Velde work with alter egos. These are not just the usual art-world flirtations with persona (which often more or less resemble the artist or are recognizable as character studies), but more sustained practices of proliferating biographies and personalities.
In Meese’s case, this involves a set of behaviors and ways of speaking, a whole machinery of selfhood that only falls apart because it’s so consistent and coherent. His characteristic comportment—which involves frenzied talking, sudden …