For twenty years or so, Erik Jeor has lived with Andrei Rublev's icons, wrestled with them, pondered them and sometimes even refused them. But in the encounter with the icons in the soft ground of copper printmaking, something happened that suddenly made them unreservedly enjoyable. At ed.art, he now presents five soft-ground etchings, in dialogue with Andrei Rublev's famous icons.

It all started when Erik Jeor found a book with Rublev's icons in an antique shop.

– They hit me, and they still do. I have thought about what it is, that gives the icons such an appeal, and I have concluded that it is because they have both depth and passion. They show what a love relationship looks like; from birth to death. To miss someone, to lose someone, to retain someone, to cherish something, to fall in love again.

– The language of religion offers concepts for things like guilt, death, forgiveness. Even if they have a place in science and philosophy, they are two-dimensional. In the religious experience, they are three-dimensional. I have turned to religion for that reason.