Interstate Projects is pleased to present Trust Falls, Jesse McLean’s first solo exhibition in New York City. In separate rooms there will be two new videos, Trust Falls, and Remote, that investigate trust, presence and the deceptive nature of the cinematic experience.

To watch movies requires trust in a certain technical magic. Viewers must suspend their rational beliefs and while this rationality is suspended, other systems are at work. Light and sound waves project through the air, passing retinas and eardrums to lodge more permanently in psychic spaces. The work in Trust Falls considers this complex transference between what is seen on screen and what is absorbed in the viewer’s mind. In the collage video Remote, dream logic invokes a presence that drifts through physical and temporal barriers. In the video Trust Falls, the subject stares outward, becoming another viewer. This viewer leans back, falling into a cinematic void and trusting that outside, there is another viewer waiting to catch their image.

Jesse McLean (b. 1975) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She studied art at Oberlin College and received her MFA in Moving Image from University of Illinois at Chicago. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago. She was the winner of the Overkill Award at the 2011 Images Festival and the Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for Emerging Experimental Video Artist at the 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival. She has presented her work at Transmediale, 25 FPS Festival, European Media Arts Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, Venice Film Festival, Conversations at the Edge, Impakt, CPH:DOX, Kassel Doc FF, NEXT, Art Chicago and PPOW Gallery.