Business Relations, Father/Son Relations, and Genuine LoveKirse Junge-Stevnsborg |
Jesper Just, A Fine Romance, 2004, DVD, Ed. 5.
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| Three fascinating stories form the new solo show by the young artist Jesper Just at the Gallery Christina Wilson in Copenhagen. "A fine Romance" is the overall title of the three video works: "No Man is an Island II" (referring to a John Donne poem), "The Sweetest Embrace of All" (referring to a Nick Cave song) and "A fine Romance" (relating to a Grimm fairytale). Staged in three separated cinemas, the videos function as both perfectly designed individual films and as a contextual framework for one another. All three films are staged in strip club milieus and they are interrelated through the young man who plays the main character. However the films unfold three very different settings. In "No Man is an Island II" the young man sits in the men’s club, raises himself, seeks eye contact with an older man at the bar, weeps, starts to sing a Roy Orbison verse passionately accompanied by a chorus of four elderly men. In "The Sweetest Embrace of All" the young man is entering the staircase of the men’s club and finds an older lonesome man doing his paperwork. The young man approaches the older man and embraces him to unconsciousness. In "A fine Romance" the young man is the object of desire. A young girl is overwhelmed with longing when HE enters her cabin. While she is memorizing passages from Twelve Dancing Princesses (except the part when the prince enters) she tries to kiss the young man and he pushes her away, he gets up and starts to dance/strip for a while intensively looking at her – then he leaves.
The narrative is open in all three films, at the same time capturing a surreal and sublime moment. What kinds of relationships are in question? Business relations, father/son relations, genuine love? Regarded from different perspectives, shifting angels and with different optics the films question our social conventions of sex, age, subject/object dichotomy, and the different modes we are presented, represented and stereotyped. The films deal with broken liaisons, sorrow, love and masculinity in an astonishing way. Strip clubs are turned into intimate stages where the players are undressing psychologically. And the more you view the films the more absurd they seem, the more touched you get, the more you want to know why. |
Business Relations, Father/Son Relations, and Genuine Love – Kirse Junge-Stevnsborg
Date posted: June 18, 2006
Author: jolanta
