EXHIBITION

Jesper Just

Portland Art Museum, Oregon, Missouri, Portland, 03/01/2014 - 07/06/2014

ABOUT

Copenhagen-born and New York-based artist Jesper Just emerged on the international scene in 2004 after graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. Selected to represent Denmark at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Just uses film and installation strategies as a vehicle to create works that address complex contemporary issues through metaphorically open-ended, detail-rich visual narratives.

Set in the picturesque Parc des Buttes-Chaumont at the outskirts of Paris, This Nameless Spectacle (2011) features French transsexual actress Marie-France Garcia in a silent drama of anticipation and surprise. Just installs the 13-minute work in such a way as to literally encompass the viewers, wedging them between two panoramic wall-sized projections. Surrounded by lush landscape vistas which suggest the closely observed descriptive textures of a Vladimir Nabokov novel, Just requires us to navigate the competing images as they shift cinematically between viewer and subject, event and expectation. Following Garcia through the park, the artist shifts our perspective from seeing to being seen—surveillance to voyeurism—as his drama unfolds. This Nameless Spectacle emerges as an experience of both spiritual and physical dimensions that leaves the viewer pondering the nature of fear and the possibilities of ecstasy.

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