Time meets time
JF Willumsen and Jørgen Haugen Sørensen
21 June – 30 December 2019
Photo: David Stjernholm
In the exhibition "Time meets time. JF Willumsen and Jørgen Haugen Sørensen", one of Denmark's greatest living sculptors, Jørgen Haugen Sørensen (1934), is invited to engage in dialogue with a selection of JF Willumsen's works. Haugen Sørensen has produced new works for the exhibition, but existing works from the past 15 years are also shown.
In the exhibition, Willumsen's monumental and classically inspired sculptural work "The Great Relief" (1893-1928) meets a series of life-sized and expressively crafted bronze figures by Haugen Sørensen, which bear titles such as "The Innocent Guilty" and "The Superfluous". Willumsen's relief, which he also calls "a poem about human life", is a coherent narrative about human existence created in a time of upheaval, where the advance of modernity undermines belief in grand narratives.
Common to the exhibited works is a focus on human life as it is lived, for better or worse. With Haugen Sørensen's pictorial universe as a frame of reference, the exhibition focuses on the more serious and grotesque aspects of Willumsen's work and scratches the colorful surface to highlight the existential depths that also manifest themselves in his art.
*****
Kristeligt dagblad
Photo: David Stjernholm
Mad dogs
… We may be the smartest species in the history of the planet, but we are also the stupidest, if Haugen Sørensen and his dogs are to be believed. The sculptor readily – and with brutal sophistication – equates mad dogs with ruthless humans, and he could easily have ended up in caricature if the nerve in the modeling had not been so vital.
The work does not resemble anything else – and certainly not anything from the present day. That is not Haugen Sørensen’s intention either – he is a witness, and his works are therefore created in a kind of ideal opposition, not only to the political power games, but also to the zeitgeist that prevails within the fine arts. In this way, he is a child of a bygone era, when artists used both their hands and their intellect to create recognizable images that could enlighten others and make them look at the world with new eyes.
Excerpt from Mikael Wivel's article "The Herd - and the Individual" which can be read in its entirety in the catalog for "Time Meets Time".
[Time Meets Time] clearly states that the urges have taken over and are the primary drivers of human will. And in that lies an implicit call to the coming generation to fight our madness. Let all schoolchildren take a look at “Time Meets Time”. It may regulate the future.
A sack with a hole in it
… Another image that I have had in my life is a sack with a hole in it. Even if you stick your hand in the sack, there is no bottom. You rummage and rummage around in the sack, and suddenly you get to the bottom, and there is a hole. And that was it. That was your life. For me it is also a funny image, because that is how life is for me.
(…) We are also a bit naive. We know that there is no meaning to life, but we still have to construct a meaning. When I make a sculpture that I think is successful, I have constructed a meaning. The problem is that you can't use that meaning for much.
We're some weird bastards. I think it's important to have a sense of humor. Because no matter what we see of branches and vultures and holes in sacks, I find life amusing. The whole absurdity, the whole situation we're in, is interesting. I'm not a depressed man because I'm doing something that some people think is crude, but maybe that's also more realistic. You can have fun even if what you touch ends up being pretty creepy.
Excerpt from “Jørgen Haugen Sørensen. A performance – told to Morten Søndergaard.” The article can be read in its entirety in the catalog for “Time meets time”
Photo: David Stjernholm
The exhibition and catalogue are supported by the Augustinus Foundation, the Beckett Foundation, the Grosserer LF Foghts Foundation, the Knud Højgaards Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation.
