Jasper Marsalis: Still Life | Chisenhale Gallery
Still Life is the first UK institutional show from Jasper Marsalis: who’s US-born, London based and the son of jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. The work belies any comfortable nepo baby origins though.
It’s a droning, sinister, large-scale audiovisual installation. The video is driven by an algorithm which loops through unsecured IP cameras from around the world, seemingly at random. Scenes include an aerial view of mountains, a rainy road, and most unsettlingly of all - blank static. The sound is separate but related: local FM radio signals, pulled in and layered into something closer to atmosphere than music.
The real kicker is, what we’re seeing is all close to live: which we’re sometimes reminded of by the date and time stamp in the corner of a feed. We’re seeing what’s happening now(ish), somewhere in the world. Nothing happens of course - cars pass by, clouds eddy along, the static bubbles blankly - but something might.
I felt something close to dread during the 30 minutes or so I stayed, feeling as if I was watching a series of establishing scenes in horror movies; those brief few moments of stillness before a burst of shock and gore. I couldn’t help but read narratives into the slmost perfectly uneventful scenes. Imposing movement onto still lives.
Marsalis probably wants me to feel this way, because, in the gallery, there’s nowhere comfortable to watch. There’s a smooth, flimsy-seeming wooden slope that you can perch on: no back support. I kept sliding forward, worried that the whole thing was going to give way. It didn’t.
The show notes term all this a “perpetual present tense”, which is spot on. Emphasis on, tense.
Jasper Marsalis: Still Life is at Chisenhale Gallery (London). 10 July - 6 September 2026