13 April 2023
Grand Opening
Last Thursday, April 13th. a new gallery opened in the heart of Florence. - Brancacci Art Gallery which takes its name after the famous chapel Cappella Brancacci, situated in the same square.
The gallery presented 10 artists from all over the world at the opening.
Under the vaults stood Jorgen’s “The Man with the Dog” and on the wall, his bronze relief “Crowding at the Door of Stupidity” which embraced the space convincingly and present. Jorgen’s work does that - it takes over any space, as if it had always been there.
Just on the other side of The Santa Maria del Carmine church, you find the renaissance Brancacci chapel, where the 21-year-old Tommaso Masaccio’s masterpiece from 1427 so vividly describes the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden.
Adam and Eve leave reluctantly and weeping, the lost paradise, the garden of innocence with only one temptation they know by now. How can you not feel sorry for them – The first Innocent Guilty.
The frescoes are deeply touching, relevant and present. I admit to be biased, but to me I am reminded of Jorgen’s “Adam and Eve” - The He and the She, he modelled in very wet clay, almost mud in “The Innocent Guilty” from 2018.
The expulsion as a theme evokes the memory of all the expulsed immigrants that Jorgen portraited again and again in his last works. A Dark story in White, The innocent Guilty and Random Justice.
At home I read more about Masaccio it is poignant to see how Masaccio speaks through time as clear as the day it was painted – or is it just us who are still always the same recognisable fools?
I think that, there are many connections to be found - in the expression as well as in the storytelling. To want to say something directly, to express today’s reality, to find a new language in the old and to tell us about human folly, guilt and innocence, to let us be reminded of justice and random injustice, time and fate and about religious or secular beliefs.
Jorgen’s work speaks for itself.
