So this is what Dorian Gray must have felt like. At least, that was the impression I got from forever is never, a silent video projection showing at the Johnson Art Museum Jan. 16-March 28. Just six minutes long, the continuously looped video is an animated series of hundreds of portraits drawn from historical and contemporary sources and seamlessly fused into a single figure. A constantly morphing portrait, forever is never is an exploration of time, reality and illusions, personal identity and the role of the spectator. It begs the question of subject: is this a portrait of everyone—or of no one?

Such psychological musings and ambiguities are at the heart of Jury’s artistic work. Jury, who received her MFA from Cornell in 1998, works primarily with photography, painting and video — often fusing these media to produce installation works like forever is never, which developed during a series of larger-than-life photographic portraits. Jury’s works are at once dependent on and critical of technology. Though Jury heavily relies on digital processes, her work critiques such technology for separating the modern spectator and consumer from reality. Jury’s work questions the role of the image and the effects of its mass distribution and manipulation, trends that have drilled holes in contemporary realism. Using both traditional media such as paint as well as new digital technologies, Jury's work focuses on ambiguities between real and manipulated images. As part of these dissociative trends, Jury’s work rejects the linear progression of time. Instead, her work blurs past and present, sometimes depicting the past’s view of the future or the present’s view of the past.

Forever is never touches on all of Jury’s characteristic themes. The video projection features a head centered on a gray backdrop constantly undergoing minute, nearly imperceptible transformations. The placement of the figure is curiously traditional, reminiscient of realist portraiture that evokes a sense of history and past. At the same time, the work is undeniably modern and digital. Jury’s thematic rejection of linear time is further bolstered by the video’s continuous looping, making it impossible to distinguish the work's beginning from its end.

This dissociation extends to questions of gender, ethnicity and age. As the image morphs, so do the characteristics with which we most readily identify. The figure morphs from male to female, youth to elder, caucasian to oriental. The subject’s ambiguity accurately reflects an age where gender, age and ethnicity are more loosely defined than ever before. This is an age of shifting gender roles, where men and women share domestic and career responsibilities. It is an age of agelessness — where plastic surgeons and anti-aging creams attempt to recapture youth — as well as an age of globalization and multiculturalism — where racial minorities are major forces and growing in number. As Jury’s work makes apparent, our conception of personal identity must change with the times.

Unlike other conceptual art pieces, forever is never is not bold or in-your-face. It is mute, hypnotic, unobtusive. The figure's transformations are gradual and seamless, almost like looking at a still image or into a mirror. At first, it is hard to notice the figure’s transformations. However, only a brief lapse in attention makes these transformations strikingly apparent. Since the portrait combines both genders and multiple ages and ethnicities, any viewer will find himself in the work — like looking into a mirror where the reflected image changes ever so slightly. This is what it must have felt like to be Dorian Gray, the fictional character created by Oscar Wilde. While Gray’s appearance remains youthful and unchanged with time, his portrait reflects his true age. This is what Dorian Gray must have felt like as he gazed upon his aging portrait: that forever is never.