Courtesy of the gallery.

Courtesy of the gallery.

Currently on view at Interstate Projects, New York is “Stars, They’re Just Like Us”, Jesse McLean’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Through video, digital and letterpress prints, and interactive installations, the work in this show investigates the paradox of connection and belonging within systems that simultaneously contain us and comprise us.

 

It is between adoration and denunciation that you enter an unpredictable psychological space. The space was built out of a yearning for connection to something other than ourselves, something extraordinary. Here you can see the potential for greatness, even stardom. Yet another desire is shaped in this space, a conflicting desire to reduce this greatness to the prosaic. McLean probes further and deeper, looking for evidence that this extraordinary presence is ordinary after all, that the stars are just like us.

 

 

Jesse McLean, Somewhere only we know, 2008   video with sound, 9:15.  Courtesy of the gallery.

Jesse McLean, Somewhere only we know, 2008 video with sound, 9:15. Courtesy of the gallery.

 

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff – Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

 

-? Carl Sagan, Cosmos

 

“Stars, They’re Just Like Us” solo exhibition by Jesse McLean will be on view through October 20th, 2013.

 

For more information on “Stars, They’re Just Like Us” exhibition, visit Interstate Projects, New York.