SØREN SEJR. From Ashes to Painting.
SARP in collaboration with Palazzo Previtera is pleased to present ten works and one site-specific installation by the Danish artist  Soren Sejr. The artist is visiting Sicily for the first time, in residence at Palazzo Previtera. Fascinated by the architecture and archaeological finds, he interprets the signs, the analogies, the similarities between the peoples and the various cultures that have lived on this Mediterranean island and the relationship with the Volcano.  This three hundred and sixty-degree aesthetic experience is an inner journey for the artist to find himself, observe and see the landscape that surrounds him with new eyes. Søren Sejr, was influenced by the abstract expressionist movement and his style evolved over time. According to a progressive process of evolution, the abstract figures of the first period and the narrative sequences disappeared from his compositions and he began to work as a pure formalist, according to the models of color field painting, where the materials and surfaces of color become elements central to his works of art. Painting on large canvases and large surfaces has given him the possibility of being there in the work, of being part not only as an artist but also as a body that inhabits the canvases and at the same time emotionally involve the viewer as in this site-specific installation .
His art consists in the act of painting itself, in which the fields of color create spaces of existence and surreal elements that give access to what lies beyond the visible. Space is not only the visible, it is also the invisible. This careful investigation of space is extended to his site-specific installations composed of objects recovered in his field of action and investigation. A site-specific installation composed of a bamboo structure to build the cross vaults of Sicilian palaces, iron structures placed on the surface once used to distribute herbicides in the fields, a crane to lift the bags of hazelnuts. This installation makes us reflect on our past and on important ecological issues such as the use of herbicides in intensive agriculture.
