Jesper Just uses the language of cinema to confront and divert the stereotypical Hollywood constructs of masculinity and femininity, as well as the biased representation of minorities and people with disabilities in mainstream culture. His short films and multi-projection video installations question the mechanisms of cinematic identification and break the viewers’ expectations of narrative closure by unfolding surreal-like, emotionally ambiguous, open-ended, and often silent situations of encounters. Whereas his use of lush, elaborated film scores plays a crucial part in creating an overall deceitful sense of narrative progression, music rather than speech also often serves as the sole means of communication between the protagonists of his unfathomable plots. Being interested in how public and private spaces define and shape the nature and extent of human interactions, Jesper Just further plays with the notion of architecture performing in his films and installations to echo and expand his characters’ enigmatic journeys.

Text courtesy Perrotin.