In a new series of works made especially for the exhibition, Jessen has specifically worked with the materials and technologies that frame and form the passages to the digital world. Through this last physical threshold to virtual reality, Jessen seeks to create a physically oriented experience of our virtual schizoid reality, by ’re-directing’ the elements from their intended technological functionality to a kind of new material quality.
For one of his new series of works Jessen has involved the Japanese glass company ’Nippon Electric Glass’, a major producer of glass substrate, the main component of LCD screens, to redirect some of their screens from a commercial production to be exposed by Jessen to an analogue process of coating, transforming the transparency of the glass, its main function, with colors used for coating cars.
In a second series of works Jessen is using the cutting debris of the aluminium industry. Aluminium is the majority part of devices, computers, tablets and phones. Thus insisting on ‘low-technological’ qualities of the specifically advanced materials, their ability to meet other needs than the functions of the virtual, Jessen seeks to transform the virtual potential to yet undefined ‘actual’ qualities. How to navigate everyday life, that increasingly takes place simultaneously in a physical reality and the digital virtual platforms made present of LCD screens and aluminium devices.
