VareseNoi | Jernej Forbici

“Auri sacra fames” is the title of the solo show by Jernej Forbici from Thursday 25 January until Sunday. The Slovenian painter relaunches his message for the environment from Varese. 

From Virgil, Aeneid : “Cursed avarice, on what desperate wickedness thy influence drives the minds of men!” to evoke the greed of the king of the Thracians, Polymestor, who had Priam’s son, Polydorus, killed in order to take possession of the treasure he was carrying with him. An execrable gesture, the denunciation of the lust for riches as the cardinal vice of humanity,

It is still very much present in our daily lives, so much so that it overshadows calamities such as wars, world hunger and above all the rapidly accelerating climate crisis, with trade agreements between powers that often go against the safeguard intentions agreed in the United Nations COP28.

An artist like Jernej Forbici, who took his cue from the verse “Auri sacra fames” to title his three-day exhibition. He will present some new works inspired by climate change, paintings in which he uses for the first time,  the gold leaf technique,  to testify to the greed of the human species.

JERNEJ FORBICI‘s canvases are hammer blows against indifference and ignorance towards problems that affect each of us but we seem to forget, landscapes in which the beauty of the subjects and colors seems to indicate a sort of Arcadia, but be careful, man has contaminated the environment in ways that are not always visible, the forest, the river, the flowers,  They are not what they seem, and the golden sky recalls an immeasurable hunger for riches with the consequent devastation of ecosystems and the end of our planet.

A direct message from the Slovenian painter, which makes us reflect on how much beauty we are in danger of losing forever, blinded by hatred and greed, a cry of alarm launched by the silence of a forest or the jerking flow of waters.

Mario Chiodetti.