Tiergarten, Berlin
Jordan Strafer
Mercy No No
HeidiHeidi presents Mercy No No, the first gallery solo exhibition by New York based artist Jordan Strafer. The namesake and center of this exhibition is the premiere of Stafer’s video Mercy No No. This work continues Strafer’s exploration of American aesthetics and cinematics of legal process, carcerality and female gendered violence but notably departs stylistically from earlier works. Without music, and shot on Super 16mm, the images show three teen girls in a therapeutic boarding school dorm room. Drawing from an amalgam of the artist's own biography with models and psychological conventions from cinema, Mercy No No is a partial reconstruction of Robert Bresson’s 1962 historical drama, The Trial of Joan of Arc. The video is screened alongside a reconstruction of a 15th Century jail cell. The exhibition extends offsite in Athens, Greece where the dorm room shown in the video remains open as a sculptural installation. The bilocated structure of this presentation refers back to Strafer’s consistent incorporation of ‘doubles’ and stand-ins and their potential function in both cinematic and psychotherapeutic practices. Mercy No No marks the closing of Strafer’s ‘Trilogy’ that was composed of PEP (Process Entanglement Procedure) (2019), SOS (2021), and Peak Heaven Love Forever (2022) and is the first in a future series of video works made in relation to the troubled teen industry. —Thomas Ragnar Keys Jordan Strafer (b. 1990, Miami) lives and works in New York. Recent exhibitions include Secession, Vienna; Participant Inc., New York; Abrons Art Center, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; SculptureCenter, New York; and New Museum, New York. Upcoming exhibitions include Index, Stockholm; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Ludwig Forum, Aachen; and Kindl Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin.