Jesper Just

The Nameless Spectacle

Bliss & Heaven 2004, A Vicious Undertone 2007, Sirens of Chrome 2010

After a visit to the recent collections at the Baltic Gateshead I was VERY excited about witnessing the work of Jesper Just whose concepts and ideas engage with my current practice.

'Just has been producing films for the last ten years. He describes his films as "working with a row of open moments" from "pause to pause". Just's work is ambiguous, uncertain and never reaches the moment of 'closure'. His films investigate emotion, power structures and psychodynamics through heightened moments of interaction. They form part of a larger enquiry about human relationships and shifting notions of identity. While Just's seductive, apparently simple and often dialogue-less films at first feel familiar, as the drama unfolds we are forced to re-assess our initial responses to them.

Infused with an ambiguity that allows for many potential readings, Just's films explore atmosphere and the moment. The earliest work in the exhibition, Bliss and Heaven 2004, an encounter between an older and younger man, marks a phase in Just’s practice when the artist exclusively used male protagonists, raising questions about gender politics and the gaze. In A Vicious Undertow 2007, turns to women and a highly charged pas de trios takes place between a whistling older woman protagonist and a younger couple. In Just's most recent work, Sirens of Chrome 2010, there is a stillness in this work in a medium that is never still, as five African-American women conduct an abstracted encounter in an apparently otherwise deserted car park. All three works in the exhibition play with the idea of spectacle to question human stereotypes. They offer an insight into the geography of emotional life and, ultimately, the human condition.' Taken from Baltic Website

My notes:

viewers expectations, encounters allows to observe, select, interpret and evaluate own meaning

idea of space, narrative & spectacle

disrupt our way of seeing, heighten moments of perception

familiarity with soundtrack

heightened interaction

image never a simple reality

investigation into human relationships

human condition