THE ICON GALLERY IMAGO NOVA
IMAGO NOVA is a virtual gallery dedicated to the holy icons, the spiritual in art and the inevitable question: who am I?
As a visitor here you may in a way similar to that in a gallery or at a museum take your time and become acquainted with a representative selection of icons in peace and quiet. The icon paintings and drawings, which are also shown here, are exposed in full-scale pictures as well as close-ups. As in the Swedish version of the gallery you will later on also find longer commentaries to the separate motifs.
The icon is a window towards heaven, a window open towards the Theo-cosmic reality, a lovely place where eyes meet eyes, and a complex spiritual landscape where the generosity of God works together with the longing of man.
This gallery would like to be a place like that. The IMAGO NOVA GALLERY was opened already in the year 2009 in order to present the icon paintings of Lars Gerdmar and to deepen the perspectives on the art of icons. This art – one of the oldest, most composite and still living pictorial cultures – invites to reflections of various kinds. The gallery has recently received a new design and with the shortened English version, which opens today, we also wish to invite the international public. Same as with the Swedish version, the English gallery will also be updated and completed with new motifs and texts to the gallery as such as well as various articles, published under the different headings in the menu.
In this new Imago Nova Icon Gallery you may still take part of Lars Gerdmars icon paintings and his commentaries. By visiting the new parts you will by and by also find portraits of now living icon painters as well as of painters from the past, articles on the history, theology and aesthetics of the icon written by experts in the field, poetry with connection to this art as well as presentations of present and planned projects. The latter does not only apply to Lars Gerdmars projects directly connected to icons but also research projects and a pilot project of conservation of old Ethiopian Orthodox art, which he initiated 2002.
The idea is that this web site, besides being a gallery, will be developed into a forum for that which belongs to the world of icons, a meeting place where you may stop and find spiritual nourishment as well as new knowledge about the icon as work, phenomenon and image of dialogue.
This is a homage to the art form which never seems to cease to engage, an ancient pictorial culture and holy tradition, which, during the early second millennium is still living and developing, an art form which gives praise to the truth, the beauty and the good, the birth of God in man, His self portrait.
IMAGO NOVAS logotyp med solfisken
