Skovgaard Museum

Hands that rip and hit, faces distorted in grisly grimaces, bodies marked by the obesity of the good life or the leanness of death, skeletons who copulate with naked women and small dogs quarreling with red mouths, revealing sharp teeth. The Skovgaard Museum exhibits during summer 2013 ceramic works by the famous Danish sculptor Jorgen Haugen Sorensen (b. 1934).

The dark side of human nature

The works are working with bleak, cruel and violent themes. They are a glimpse into the darker and less benign side to human nature. One has the feeling that grim inner being and worst nightmare of Man come to life in the works by Haugen Sorensen. Everything we hate about others and ourselves, all that we crave or dread. Our musty and oppressed nature rise to the surface and shows its ugly face. The works invite both fascination and fright. Maybe they are not nice to look at - but it is hard to look away.

Ceramic figures

In recent years, working with ceramics has taken an increasing part of Haugen Sørensen's time, with figures of snarling dogs, screaming mouths or bodies in decay and disintegration. Best known, however, are his monumental granite sculptures. But where his works in granite, marble, bronze and fabric are abstract, the ceramic works are figurative. Heads, bodies, dogs and other recognizable and human is what occurs when Haugen Sorensen is working the clay. Where the monumental and heavy works are aesthetic, harmonious and balanced in their forms, materials and texture, the ceramics is almost screaming in defiance of the beautiful and neat.

Haugen Sorensen lives and works in Italy. Since 1956 he has exhibited both in Denmark and internationally, and he has earned great respect and attention for his sculptural work.

Photographer Ole Misfeldt