Jesper Just: This Nameless Spectacle
University of Michigan Museum of Art, 08/18/2012 - 11/09/2012
ABOUT
Visitors encountering Danish artist Jesper Just’s This Nameless Spectacle will find themselves captivated in stages, as the experience of viewing it unfolds over time. In this breathtaking installation, as in much of his work, Just situates the viewer in his signature landscape of beauty, provocation, and a general uneasiness that is as seductive as it is ominous. The storyline is at once deceptively simple and perplexing: a wheelchair-bound protagonist travels through a neighborhood in the outskirts of Paris to her apartment, while a young male character appears to follow her. Once home, she is able to leave her wheelchair but is overcome by a powerful seizure. One of Just’s unique strengths is his ability to engage the viewer in an open-ended, unresolved narrative in a manner that is more intriguing than frustrating. It is impossible to parse but equally impossible to abandon, and this is the essence of Just’s gift for hypnotic storytelling.
For More Information
Visitors encountering Danish artist Jesper Just’s This Nameless Spectacle will find themselves captivated in stages, as the experience of viewing it unfolds over time. In this breathtaking installation, as in much of his work, Just situates the viewer in his signature landscape of beauty, provocation, and a general uneasiness that is as seductive as it is ominous. The storyline is at once deceptively simple and perplexing: a wheelchair-bound protagonist travels through a neighborhood in the outskirts of Paris to her apartment, while a young male character appears to follow her. Once home, she is able to leave her wheelchair but is overcome by a powerful seizure. One of Just’s unique strengths is his ability to engage the viewer in an open-ended, unresolved narrative in a manner that is more intriguing than frustrating. It is impossible to parse but equally impossible to abandon, and this is the essence of Just’s gift for hypnotic storytelling.
For More Information