JESPER JUST: INTERFEARS
Perrotin New York is pleased to present Jesper Just’s film “Interfears”, alongside the debut of an accompanying series of MRI prints.
October 29 – December 21, 2024
Jesper Just’s video installations combine his technical knowledge of film with a desire to disrupt linear narrative structure, creating surrealist encounters that leave us with more questions than answers. Over the last three decades, Just has developed a stylized approach that weaves fragmented, inconclusive storylines into his sensorially loaded environments. While watching his films, viewers must search for clues, focusing not only on the actions of his characters but the emotional discourse. Interested in how public and private spaces define human interaction, Just utilizes his character’s surrounding environments to guide plot lines. And, his elaborate film scores build narrative progression, where music often serves as an integral means of communication.
“Interfears” explores the claim that emotions can be learned, and staged, following the protocols of our social and cultural environments. In the film, Academy Award nominee Matt Dillon is seen enclosed in an fMRI as he recites a monologue. While Dillon plays a character, the machine records the actor’s authentic response, blending both beings into one shared existence. Over the course of the film, the seemingly emotionless character becomes overwhelmed, in a failed attempt to control his emotions.
Supplementing the film, Just debuts a series of MRI prints which map the topography of Dillon's acted emotions. The captured array of emotions—terror, joy, sadness—each light up a specific part of the brain. In his prints, Just blends various angles of the brain during each emotion in a collage of neurological activity, resulting in two dimensional representations of the mind throughout the performance.
In “Interfears”, the actor and character come together, blurring the boundary between real and simulated emotional response. As Jesper Just says, “What do you do with your ego when you are playing a role? Are you possessed? Are you still aware of who you are?”