Jørgen Haugen Sørensen passed away in November 2021. Until the very end, he was working on a new exhibition for Hans Alf Gallery. “Before and a little after”, which opens on April 1st, will be the final show of a long and impressive career that spanned more than seven decades.
By July 2021, we were finally able to go back to Pietrasanta. Since 2013, when we started working with Jørgen, we’d been used to visiting the mythical village in Toscana several times a year, but due to the Corona-pandemic, Jørgens declining health, and the required isolation from his surroundings, almost 2 years had gone by, since we last set foot in Jørgen’s home in Solaio high above the Ligurian sea.
We went to Tuscany primarily to witness Jørgen Haugen Sørensen’s comprehensive exhibition at the Prato Museum north of Florence - a tour de force in his bleak and brutal universe, distributed across three very different venues in the historic center of the city - but we also wanted to plan his next project with the gallery. Jørgen was frail, but in good spirits. A prolonged period of illness had left its visible mark on his physique, but his mind was unaffected. We enjoyed a glass of wine on the porch under a marvelous bamboo, having a routine, friendly bicker, and Jørgen and his wife showed us some of the new works, he had been working on: A small, rectangular relief that he wanted to cast in bronze, and a handful of sculptures that were nearly finished. Especially one piece, a sculpture called “Monumental Disregard”, made a huge impression on us, and we kept talking about it, after we’d said our goodbyes and shuffled our way through the dense afternoon traffic on the highway towards Florence. That was the last time we saw Jørgen.
On the 18th of November, Jørgen Haugen Sørensen died in his home in Solaio. He left a permanent mark in the world, a legacy that most artists could only dream of.
Friday April 1st, we open our doors to what would prove to be Jørgen Haugen Sørensen’s last self-conceived exhibition. Former director of Bornholm’s Museum of Art and life-long friend and collaborator of Jørgen, Lars Kærulf Møller, will open the exhibition.
The exhibition contains both ceramic and bronze reliefs, a series of newly produced bronze sculptures, and Jørgen’s final drawings. “Before and a Little After” is a combination of brand-new and recent works that have been exhibited in a different context. This particular juxtaposition was decided with Jørgen long before his death: It’s how he wanted it.
