In November 2015, passers-by in New York’s Times Square were treated to an unusual experience if they raised their gaze to the many screens that are integrated into the square’s spectacular architecture. Every night around midnight, the commercials were switched off and temporarily replaced with the video installation Servitudes by the Danish artist Jesper Just. The installation has now become a permanent part of the important contemporary collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The New York connection
‘Moving from the chaotic urban space to the exhibition hall, the installation enters into new constellations and generates new meanings without, however, losing its original context,’ says Sheena Wagstaff, chairman of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art:
‘We were especially attracted to Servitudes due to its New York connection. The installation moves us with its engagement in the city’s varying architecture and monumental skyline, and it deserves a home in one of the major institutions of this metropolis.’
International efforts
The inclusion of Jesper Just’s Servitudes in the prestigious collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was made possible by a donation from the New Carlsberg Foundation. Karsten Ohrt, chairman of the New Carlsberg Foundation, says,
‘The New Carlsberg Foundation’s increasing support to Danish art on the international scene is driven by an awareness that Danish artists are using the entire world as their workplace and a source of inspiration. The purpose of supporting museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou and the Guggenheim Museum, with grants for purchasing, presenting and studying Danish art is precisely to promote the significant international interest that Danish artists, quite deservedly, are currently experiencing.’
At Kunsthal Charlottenborg
Although the installation is now joining the collection at the Met in New York, the audience will have an opportunity to experience the installation in Denmark over the summer of 2019, when the Kunsthal Charlottenborg dedicates about 1000 square metres to a presentation of Jesper Just’s comprehensive oeuvre. Michael Thouber, the director of Kunsthal Charlottenborg, says,
‘We are proud to present this principal work by one of Denmark’s most important contemporary artists. We saw the installation at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and ever since, the opportunity to present it to a Danish audience has been high on our wish list.’
About Servitudes
Servitudes consists of a series of short films, all set at New York’s One World Trade Center. In one of these shorts we see a young woman (Dree Hemingway) sitting a table eating an ear of corn. This mundane act is made difficult by the fact that her hands are fitted with rehabilitation devices, the kind that are used to retrain muscles after an injury. The woman keeps dropping the ear of corn, again and again, then picking it up and continuing, while occasionally looking into the camera with a gaze that is at once flirtatious and shy. In another short, the camera follows a child (Rylee Sweeney) suffering from the hereditary disease Charcot-Marie-Tooth. The function of her limbs and hands is impaired. In one scene she quietly plays with her own reflection in the building’s glass facade. In another scene we observe her inside the building as she picks out a fractured tune on a grand piano.
Seen through the artist’s eyes, the deserted building becomes a haunted world. A replacement of the Twin Towers that were destroyed on September 11, 2001, the skyscraper seems unable to escape the ghosts of the past. In this perfectly transparent, luxurious and streamlined setting, the woman and the girl move in and out of the scenes with no apparent purpose – lonely, enigmatic and fragile.
About Jesper Just
Jesper Just (b. 1974 in Copenhagen). Lives and works in New York. Over the past ten years the Danish video artist has received international recognition for short films marked by great technical precision and beauty that tell stories of human relationships and emotions. Jesper Just has exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world, and in 2013 he represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale. He attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Arts, in 1997–2003.
