Christoffer Jørgensen: ALTERED STATES

ALTERED STATES is Christoffer Joergensen’s third solo exhibition at Galleri Christoffer Egelund. The show features Public Spheres, the artist’s long term project dealing with democracy and Europe.

The parliament is the heart of our democracies. Since 2010, Christoffer Joergensen has visited 15 of Europe’s parliaments and has photographed its plenary halls. This ongoing documentation forms the basis of the Public Spheres project.

In Joergensen’s view, the biggest threat to Europe does not come from somewhere beyond its borders but arguably from its very core: it’s identity, which is currently caught in a paradoxical state. It’s central values – democracy, human rights, liberalism – are supposed to be universal. But at the same time, Europe wants those values to be particular to itself.

In ALTERED STATES, Joergensen brings this contradiction to light through different fields of tension. His pictures are themselves paradoxical, displaying unity as well as fragmentation, particularity as well as universality, difference as well as repetition. The medium of photography, which forms the basis of his practice, can be viewed as similarly contradictory, as a global container for particular identities.

Kilde: Galleri Christoffer Egelund