Window on Infinity - Room Madonna 2.17

Ensemble

 

For Jef Verheyen, painting is like a liturgy. It is a celebration of colour. He is interested in the symbolism of colours, the emotions they evoke and the interaction between colour and meaning. A reproduction of Jean Fouquet's Madonna hung in his studio. Verheyen's diptych Lux est Lex hangs here beside that 15th-century masterpiece, a work that was originally part of a diptych. Both artists play with the contrast between blue and red, between cold and warm. The cherubim and seraphim become fields of colour. Verheyen's diptych is an homage to a painting that is so modern in character that it appears surreal. It could just as well have been painted today.