Perry Rubenstein Gallery 23 Street will feature three video installations by Danish artist Jesper Just
in his first solo exhibition in New York. The exhibition features the premier of two new works. While redemption, power and seduction are some of the motifs that Just explored in his short films A Fine Romance, The Sweetest Embrace of All , and No Man is an Island I I, each narrative is seemingly ambiguous in nature. Shot in a strip club, the same young male protagonist in each film confronts love and loss through a set of unsettling revelations, challenging the taboos attached to cross-gender and cross-generational relationships. At the moment the viewer attempts to unravel the protagonist's psyche, Just's characters take on an irreverent direction, revealing bittersweet circumstances. His films create a world in which both the viewer and the characters oscillate between dominance and submission through the manipulation of both social and cinematic convention. Just appropriates and mutates the conventions of mainstream Hollywood productions and "film noir" aesthetics in works by directors such as Bob Fosse, Lars von Trier, David Lynch, and Elia Kazan. The sets and music are equally important as the characters in the films. Shot in Denmark, Just employs professional actors, dancers and opera singers in all of his films.
Jesper Just was born in 1974 in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he currently lives and works. He
has participated in numerous international exhibitions at: Momentum 04 in Moss, Norway; Casino
Luxembourg in Luxembourg; Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino, Italy; Herning Art Museum in Denmark; Midway Contemporary Art in Minneapolis; and Harbourfront Center in Toronto, Canada. He graduated from the Copenhagen Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2003.