Dutch artist Mons Jorgensen's meta-world goes on display in Bologna

Bologna, on the occasion of ARTEFIERA as part of ART CITY Bologna 2024, will host the exhibition This is not a fairytale (Or is it?)), the first Italian solo exhibition of Dutch artist Mons Jorgensen (Rotterdam, 1968). The exhibition, present from Jan. 31 to Feb. 24, will be hosted by Spazio b5 Studio Store Creativo, curated by architect Lorena Zuniga Aguilera and photographer Michele Levis.

The exhibition will host not only the artist’s pictorial works (seven acrylics and pastel on canvas), but also seven black and white photographs, three short films, clay sculptures and performances. A key theme of Jorgensen’s solo exhibition, is the’meta-world,’ an imaginary world that transcends the boundaries of reality. Through the use of fantasy, myth, metaphor and mask, a support not of fiction but rather a revealer of identity, the artist manages to delve into the depths of the everyday with sensitivity and lightness. Thanks to the collaboration of Laboratorio di Idee, the indicated themes are the common thread of the exhibition. Two-dimensional images with hypnotic compositions are thresholds to another dimension that makes use of the original meaning of myth as a vehicle for otherwise inexpressible content.

Jorgensen says he brought his works to life inside a forest, wearing only a blind mask. Once she lost visual contact with the outside world, her imagination took over her mind, making her imagine surreal scenarios alive only within her thoughts. “I realized that what was happening in my mind, turned on by that mask covering my face, was much more interesting than everything else. And that is what I would like to give back to those who come to see me in Bologna.” he declares.

“The artist,” Marcello Tedesco further says in his critical text, “has chosen to express himself in a ’minor’ language, almost dialectal, happily marginal, combining a marked linguistic fluidity with forms refractory to rigid definitions.”

Inside the exhibition, the public will also be able to participate directly in the performance experience created in collaboration with the Colli Theater School, directed by Emanuele Montagna and featuring actors Asia Galeotti and Riccardo Quarta . It will be scheduled with a double date on Jan. 31 and Feb. 3, on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition itself and ART CITY White Night. Through the performance, those present will be able to play the roles of actors, recognizable by a blind mask on their face and a cloak, and spectators, in order to experience both the power of mental imagination without the use of sight and the awareness of the act of seeing.

It is precisely on the concept of sight and looking that two of the works in the exhibition, namely Schembart Miro, photography, 2018, and Merfish, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 2023, will be part of an auction, the proceeds of which will be donated to theIstituto dei Ciechi Francesco Cavazza Onlus, founded in Bologna in 1881. Present throughout the country, the institute works on the integration, training, rehabilitation and autonomy of blind and visually impaired people.

Notes on the artist

Mons Jorgensen was born in Rotterdam in 1968 but, currently lives in London. For his artistic ideas and the creation of his works, the artist employs different artistic disciplines and various two- and three-dimensional media seeing art as a process that fills the physical world with meaning.

Jorgensen bases his artistic research on mythology, fairy tales and European legends, subjects that manage to evoke images in his mind that influence all his works. In 2010 he graduated from Camberwell College of Arts with a degree in Painting. She then went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from Central Saint Martins in London, where in 20129 she won the Graduate Art Prize. In the same year, she was selected by the contemporary art gallery Saatchi Art London to exhibit at The Other Art Fair exhibition center in Turin, Italy. In her artistic career, she also exhibits in different parts of the world, such as London, Athens and Seoul.

Pictured: Mons Jorgensen with one of his masks.

Dutch artist Mons Jorgensen's meta-world goes on display in Bologna

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